


Ten Trips Through Wonderland

by akainagi



Category: Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2012-11-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 11:42:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 39,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akainagi/pseuds/akainagi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One hundred and twenty prompt ficlets, originally written in ten prompt burts.  They come together to form a (mostly) coherent storyline.  AU from the end of the movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ten Trips Through Wonderland

**Prompt: Cell**

He would not have seen it end this way. An ignominious end to the last of the Hightop Clan. Losing his head to the whim of the Bloody Big Head Herself. Not living to see vengeance exacted for the events of Horunvendush day those many years ago. But he rested easy in the knowledge that it would be exacted in spades.

For his faith in her was absolute.

She would succeed, not because it was foretold in the Oraculum, but because he had witnessed the return of her _muchness_. The return of _Alice._

_His Alice._

And while the break of dawn on the morrow could well see his head roll, his heart, already given, would follow Alice into battle.

 

**Prompt: Deviate**

When he asked her to stay, with that mad, hopeful, almost plaintive look in his eyes, she immediately knew what her answer would be. Must be. For she was a good daughter, who would not leave her mother to worry, a good sister, and sister-in-law who would dutifully return. She even felt she owed a duty to that miserable dolt to whom she was most definitely _not_ affianced. 

Because in the end, her _muchness_ went only as far as stockings and corsets, and most certainly did not include throwing her staid life away to embark on a half-mad life with a half-mad man in a half-mad land.

So she made her excuses and tried very hard not to see the light of hope extinguished in the Hatter’s eyes as she lifted the vial to her lips.

And paused.

And would her mother live her life for her, she wondered. Or her sister, with her unfaithful dog of a husband. Or Hamish? Would they be a comfort to her as she went on existing, after giving up the experience of truly _living_. Would they comfort her as she waited for the love of her life to appear, knowing that she had already met him, and left him, a lonely figure on a chessboard a world away?

The purple liquid stained the squares of the chessboard where she poured it out on the ground.

_How’s that for muchness?_

 

**Prompt: Enclosed**

Helen Kingsleigh recognized the tilted scrawl the moment the postman delivered the tattered letter. She no sooner slammed the door in the poor man’s face then she was ripping open the envelope and tossing it to the floor, desperate to get at its contents. _After all this time. Finally. The dear Lord has rewarded me for not giving up hope._ She scanned the letter for the three words she most wanted to see: I’m coming home.

_  
Dearest Mother,_

_I do hope you’ll forgive me for not having written you in so long. I wasn’t even aware it was possible until now. I know you must be wondering where I’ve gotten to, ever since that party at the Ascots’. It’s hard to believe that was over a year ago. You wouldn’t believe me if I wrote you of all that has happened to me since then. The first thing you must know is that I’m well, and that my life is full and happy. I’ve gained a purpose to my life that I never would have known had I simply returned to my dreary life in London to become Lady Ascot._

_I have just become engaged, mother. That’s right, I am to be married to a wonderful man. I know he is not precisely who you would have chosen for me, but he makes me desperately happy. He’s a master of his trade, and is employed at court, so you needn’t worry at all for my fortunes._

_I’m sorry to have left without a word like I did. I can only imagine how you and Margaret must have worried. I can comfort you only with the fact that I continue to be well and happy. Be the same. I shall write again._

_Love,_  
Alice  


Helen desperately searched the floor for the envelope; her last hope. The tears began to fall as she read the one word of return address:

_Wonderland_

 

**Prompt: Devil**

At first Alice found the Red Queen to be more obnoxious and foolish than the force of pure evil that had been described to her. To be sure she found the queen’s treatment of the animals in her court to be just the other side of deplorable, and the constant toadying of those around her caused Alice to feel slightly ill. Though she supposed she had little room to talk, since at the moment, Alice was counted among the toadies. 

So she went along with the flow, trying not to crack a smile every time she introduced herself as “Um from Umbridge.” She even giggled slightly when the queen demanded a pig belly for her aching feet. 

Her false sense of security was dashed, however, when the queen ordered the prisoner to be brought in.

The Hatter cut a pathetic figure, bound hand and foot. He moved slowly, as if each step caused him physical pain. And was that the Hatter’s own bizarre natural coloring, or did she detect bruises?

They had tortured him. To find out her whereabouts they had tortured this harmless, half-mad man?

They had all been right. She had been wrong. This woman was the devil.

_Down with the bloody Big Head._

 

**Prompt: Ocean**

Light streamed through the windows of the palace at Marmoreal, bringing a new day to the inhabitants of the White Court, and awakening one Alice Hightopp from a most interesting dream. She yawned and snuggled into her husband’s side, resisting the breaking dawn for just a few more moments.

“I had that dream again,” she informed him, not checking to see if he was awake. He was always awake before her. “Is it normal to have the same dream every night?”

“Don’t ask me,” he replied, placing a light kiss on her forehead. “I’m the mad one, remember?”

She giggled. “No, really. It’s the same every night. I’m on a boat … no, not a boat … a great ship. I’m waving goodbye to my mother and sister and we sail off into the sunrise. We’re heading East, I think. A huge ocean stretching out in front of us. I’m not sure where we’re headed, but I’m sure it’s somewhere grand.”

“Are you wearing a hat?”

Alice thought for a moment, “I don’t remember. I don’t think so.”

“Because if you’re headed somewhere altogether grand,” Tarrant explained matter-of-factly, “you should be hatted properly for the occasion.”

“Perhaps I’m underdressed.”

The Hatter rested his chin atop his wife’s head. “Or perhaps, you’re headed home. Where is grander than Marmoreal? Then you don’t have to worry about being properly hatted. I shall make all the hats you should need when you arrive.”

She looked up at her husband, wondering, as she often did, at his wisdom-masquerading-as-madness. She smiled serenely. “Now that, husband, is a wonderful thought.”

 

** Prompt: Promise **

They had made so many promises to each other during their year-long engagement, that Alice doubted either of them remembered them all:

“I promise to never make you wear a corset,” then he’d whisper in the rough outlandish brogue that made her insides shiver, “all the less for me to take off.”

“I promise never again to clean up you workshop.” Honestly, men could be so territorial. Especially when ribbons and lace were concerned.

“I promise to never make you dance a quadrille.” He promised dutifully, but still couldn’t fathom her violent dislike for such a perfectly boring dance.

Her hands framed his face after stopping a particularly violent rant. “When you fall mad,” she solemnly swore, “I’ll always be there to catch you.”

But when Mirana, before a crowd that seemed comprised of all of Underland, asked them if they promised to love, honor, and keep to only each other, so long as they both should live, suddenly that was the only promise of their lives that seemed to matter.

 

** Prompt: Lost **

Periodically, he knows, he loses himself. Comes with the territory of being half-mad. He inhabits the annoying middle ground between those who are fully sane and those who are too sunk in insanity to care.

But he does care.

Ever since _she_ returned.

It frightens her, he knows, when that switch is flipped and his Outlandish mad self comes out to play. He can be a nasty bugger; a violent, unpredictable sort, driven by memories of guilt and rage and death. He’s only too happy to scream and rail and visit violence in return on whoever is closest.

And she is close. She is his closest. And he wants to keep her there, beside him, but for the fear of the _other_ coming out and scaring her, harming her, making her run from him in fear, maybe never to return.

What would it be like to lose himself in _her_ , he wonders. To lose himself in her cool and tranquil waters, rather than in the blazing fire of madness that periodically consumes him.

And each time she draws him back from that mad place, he thanks his lucky stars, or bats, or teatrays or whatever celestial orbs rule his fate that she has not been scared away. Not yet. Those tranquil waters are still there, waiting for him to be ready. Waiting for her to invite him in.

 

**Prompt: Beginnings**

The first time she was placed in his arms, he knew he was smitten. Pacing the floor, he marveled at the impossibly small bundle of _life_ he held in his work-roughened hands.

“Happy Birthday, little one. You’ve already met your mother; she’s the impossibly beautiful one over there who did all the work. Well, I’m your father. I’m a little ‘round the bend, but your mother says all the best people are, and you should always listen to your mother because she’s usually right.”

“Usually?” a tired voice chuckled from the bed.

“Alright, almost always,” he corrected. “Starting tomorrow I shall make you your first bonnet. Blue will suit you, just like your mother. And when you are older I shall teach you all manner of things like how to hat, and how to make tea, and when the boys come round you I shall gouge them all with hatpins.”

“Tarrant. Don’t you think you're getting a tad ahead of yourself?”

He moved to sit next to his exhausted wife. “Nonsense. Can never be too careful where my daughter is concerned … Alice, love?”

“Yes, Tarrant,” she stifled a yawn.

“Is this real?" His face was full of hope tinged with terror. "Is this really truly real? You’re not dreaming this are you?”

Alice laughed, lifting a hand to caress her husband’s face. “Nope. Too sore to be a dream. This is our life, Tarrant.”

He felt a burning behind his eyes, the well of emotion threatening to overflow. He was no longer the last of his clan. _They live through me. Through her._ He placed a kiss on the tiny brow and was rewarded by a sleepy snuffle.

“Lara Hightopp. Welcome home.”

 

** Prompt: Snare **

“Hold on tight.”

If she had realized what the Hatter was doing while he was doing it, she would have put up more of a fuss.

As it was, before she knew it, she was being flung an impossibly far distance, balanced precariously on the brim of a hat, _over a river_. In her panic she dimly heard a cry of “Down with the Bloody Red Queen!” before she landed with a bone-jarring thud on the far riverbank.

It was then that it occurred to her that the Hatter would have a devil of a time getting over there.

It wasn’t until she saw the numerous red guards, more than she could count, surrounding the hapless hatter and spiriting him away, presumably to the clutches of the Red Queen, that she realized escape had never been his intention.

He was a sacrifice. He was sacrificing himself so that she could escape.

Feelings rose in her. Guilt. Impotent Rage. Fear. She crawled under the hat and curled into a ball, hugging her knees to her chest. 

And as she tried to settle in for the night, her mind kept returning to the Hatter, what they might possibly be doing to him, and how, at the first opportunity, she was going to rescue him. From under the nose of the Bloody Red Queen if necessary.

 

** Prompt: Silence **

He realized early on that Alice had an amazing gift of _stillness_

This was a quality the Hatter, half mad as he was, was in sore need of. All the comings and goings and unwelcome voices that swirled in the maelstrom of his untamed mind seemed that much quieter when she was near.

The simple caress of her hands on his face brought the voices down to a dull roar in the background. The first time she pressed her lips to his, he marveled at the softness and sweetness of it, but also, the stillness in the moment. The raging demons in his mind faded into quietude.

The first time they lay together, she welcomed his body into her own with the same generosity, selflessness and love with which she welcomed his heart; offering a safe, calm harbor for both. 

He was awestruck in the moment, how it was just the two of them. Their bodies fit like they were made to come together in this precise way. And this time, when the crowding in his mind dissipated, he saw clearly what he wanted; her, this way and in all ways not just now, but forever.

A dream so simple it was mad to even think it: he would have Alice for his wife.

 

**Prompt: Tidings**

Though Alice was never quite sure whether it was the flowers who let the cat out of the bag, or the cat who let himself out of the bag, she would just have to face facts; keeping a secret in Underland for any length of time was nigh on impossible.

She had managed to pry her husband away from his workshop for the evening, a feat with which she was very much pleased. But when she had suggested a turn about the gardens, which were absolutely splendid in the moonlight, she had forgotten how mouthy the flowers in Underland could be.

“Oh look Rose,” the Lilly whispered, “ it’s _those two_ again.”

“Oh dear, oh dear, I hope they won’t do like last time,” the white rose complained. “I swear I turned positively _red_ with the shame of it."

“ _You_ turned red??” Ivy interjected. “Let's not forget who ended up with knickers dangling from her leaves!”

While her husband was chuckling with mirth at the exchange, Alice still had enough modesty in her to blush. “You know we can hear everything you say,” she announced to the garden at large. “It is rather rude.”

Ivy huffed, “Should’ve thought of propriety before you sent your knickers flying, I’d say.”

The hatter giggled even more madly.

“Tarrant! You’re not helping matters,” Alice sighed.

“Well just look at her,” the hyacinth said matter-of-factly, motioning to Alice. “Hardly more than newlywed and budding _already_.

Tarrant’s cackles stopped immediately. “Budding?” he asked dumbly.

A Cheshire voice, followed closely by a Cheshire grin, a Cheshire body and a furry Cheshire tail materialized next to Alice. “I think what they _mean_ to say, my dear Hatter, is that your wife, shall we say, has a ‘bud’ in the oven.”

“Cheshire,” Alice snapped, altogether peeved at her secret being let out before she was ready. “What in Underland are you doing here?”

“Are you kidding?” The Cat’s grin widened. “I’ve been following you around for weeks just so I could see his face when he found out. I do so love a surprise.”

Chess evaporated just in time not to be caught between the couple as Tarrant caught up his wife in his arms and kissed her with all the passion he could muster.

“My congratulations and felicitations to you both. And way to go Tarrant old boy.” His feline voice faded and then disappeared into the distance. Neither Alice nor Tarrant took heed; they were so wrapped up in each other.

“Oh dear,” the long-suffering Ivy sighed. “Here go the knickers again.”

 

**Prompt: Cake**

When Tarrant awoke, on his first morning as a newly married man, he was greeted by the nostalgic, familiar smell of freshly delivered tea and cakes.

Pulling his trousers on, leaving his slumbering bride, he set about doing one of the things he did best, setting out tea. So engrossed was he in his task, he didn’t hear the rustling of sheets and the soft padding of bare feet.

The press of bare breasts and hands snaking around his midsection were rather hard to miss, though.

“Tarrant,” that well-loved voice purred into his ear. “Come back to bed.”

As it happened, they didn’t even make it to the bed. All it took was one look at Alice, naked as the day she was born, save for Tarrant’s own hat. That’s all it took for him to fall back into one of the chairs, deftly unfastening himself with one hand and pulling her down atop him with the other, all the while growling at her in his outlandish burr to leave the hat on.

They rocked together violently, nearly toppling the chair in their enthusiasm for each other. Her nails down his back, his teeth nipping none too lightly at her neck, each leaving their mark on the other’s body. Mapping out ownership: _mine_. And when they found their completion they each cried out with an unbridled joy that doubtless could be heard several doors down and possibly upstairs. And when they came back down to themselves they each laughed with the sheer joy of it all, and said to each other the only thing that still needed saying.

“Good morning Mrs. Hightopp.”

“Why good Morning Mr. Hightopp.”

By the time they got around to it, the tea was cold, but the cakes, they had to admit, were quite tasty.

 

**Prompt: Voyage**

“Bayard! To Marmoreal!”

With those words she set out to the seat of the white queen with the Vorpal Sword. There, hopefully they could find someone brave enough, endowed with enough destiny to slay this Jabberwocky creature and bring the crown back to its rightful owner. God knew she wasn’t the one. She was not destined to be champion of anything. She was a nineteen year-old, seven foot tall girl clothed in draperies, one who at the moment was barely able to contain her despair.

If she were a Champion, she would not be flying headlong away from the Red Queen’s Palace right now. She would not be leaving the Hatter and Mallymkun to face torture and beheading.

Her dear Hatter. He had told her to run, to fly, to escape. To leave him to his fate and save herself, believing with every fiber of his being that she was the one who would save the world.

But how could she possibly be the one destined to save the world?

When she couldn’t even save one man.

 

**Prompt: Battle**

The slaying of Jabberwockies, Alice decides on first sight of the beast, is better left to the professionals.

Surely fate could have picked a seasoned warrior, or at least someone who held a sword before, to be Underland’s champion. 

But as she faces the beast, she knows that fate has far too much of a sense of humor to do that.

So she holds on to her six impossible things, holds them close, and holds them as proof that she can rise above her expectation of herself, instead rise to meet the expectation of all those who are counting on her, and maybe even to rise further still.

And she does rise, metaphorically and physically, climbing the steep stone steps that tower over the Tulgey Wood. Steps to nowhere. But as she rises she can feel herself buoyed by the hopes of all her friends; her dear Hatter, the Queen, Mallymkun, Chess, even the Tweedles. And when she reaches the apex, she finds that they may not be steps to nowhere after all.

For at the top she has found herself.

 

**Prompt: Destination**

The trip from Salazen Grum to the castle at Marmoreal is a long one by foot. Especially when trailing tweedles, a rabbit, a dormouse, a hound and a litter of pups.

But the trip is light on the Hatter’s heart, for he walks towards the White Queen, symbol of all that is good and pure, he walks towards the Frabjous day, which grows closer with each step.

And each step brings him one step closer to seeing Alice again.

He wonders; will she be shorter or taller this time? Will she have accepted her destiny, or will she still insist she is travelling through a land of dreams. Will she have reclaimed any more of her _muchness_?

He spends much of the time between palaces imagining the look on her face when they arrive. She will be glad to see them, of course. He pictures her smile. He wonders if she will run to greet them, or will she hang back.

Will she be wearing a hat?

And when they finally reach the bridge that marks the beginning of Marmoreal’s castle grounds all his questions are answered because, yes she is running to greet him. Not just all of them but him in particular. He knows this is so by the way their eyes lock together and it pleases him no end. Not to mention that she is finally the perfect size. And while she is not wearing a hat, she is wearing one of the most radiant smiles he has ever seen, and that also pleases him no end.

Because that smile, that radiant smile, is for him.

 

**Prompt: Hold On**

He hadn’t even realized the madness had come upon him until it had nearly passed. One moment he had been carrying on an entirely pleasant conversation with Alice. And then the storm was upon him, triggered by words or memories or maybe just some cruel trick of his thoroughly ghastly mind. He saw red and black and blood and fire and when he came back to himself his voice was hoarse from screaming and his neck bore fresh scratches, inflicted by his own hands. And there was the sound of a woman crying. As his vision swam back into focus he saw Alice, dear Alice, standing in front of him, trembling with tears streaming down cheeks gone pale with fear.

Surely he had frightened her, terrified her; he terrified himself sometimes. 

With a leaden heart, he waited for her to flee. Driven away by her fear and by the depth and breadth of his madness.

Instead, limitless in her ability to surprise, she launched herself towards him, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face against his injured neck. Holding onto him with a ferocity and a desperation that belied her small size.

“Hatter,” she whispered tearfully, “I’m scared.”

 _I’m fine_ , he almost said automatically. But he would not lie to her. His own voice trembled slightly. “Alice … I wouldn’t hurt you for all the world … but I go quite mad, you see. There’s nothing to be done for it I’m afraid.”

She pulled away to look in his eyes, brining her fine-boned hands to frame his face. Amazing how that simple gesture calmed his soul so.

“I’m not afraid for _myself_ , Hatter. I’m afraid that one day you won’t come back to me.”

He wished he could promise her that that would never happen, but again he would not lie to her. Instead, he promised the only thing he could. “Alice, if anyone can bring me back, it is you.”

 

** Prompt: I’m Here **

It was impossibly early when Alice was awakened by the knock on her bedroom door. Impossibly early considering it was the morning after the Frabjous day and everyone had been up reveling until nearly dawn.

She thought of ignoring it, but the knock was so insistent that she was afraid it was something serious.

She stumbled, bleary eyed, out of bed. Pulling on a dressing gown, she made her way to the door, pulling it open sharply, as she was slightly peeved at having her slumber interrupted.

She was greeted by the Hatter, who stood in the doorway with a fearful expression on his face.  
But the second he caught sight of Alice, dressing gown and all, the most beatific smile spread across his face and he breathed a sigh of what Alice took as profound relief.

“You’re still here.”

Alice made a show of examining her person. “Apparently. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You see I woke up this morning and thought that perhaps it was a dream. You deciding to stay here, I mean. After all, I am half mad, as you yourself pointed out, and it would be like a half-mad person to dream up an imaginary Alice.” He stopped for a moment. “Wait a moment. You are real, aren’t you? I’m not dreaming you, am I?”

Alice laughed. “I thought we established yesterday that nobody was dreaming anybody else.”

“No, we established that you weren’t dreaming me up, not that I wasn’t dreaming you up.”  
Alice sighed. She had a feeling she’d be doing a lot of that where her Hatter was concerned. She raised a hand, and placed it on his cheek. Without warning she gave it a pinch.

“Ouch!” the Hatter exclaimed in surprise.

“See,” Alice pointed out, “wide awake. I’m here, Tarrant. And I’m not going anywhere. Except back to bed. Good morning.” She shut the door on the surprised Hatter, who was still rubbing his pinched cheek.

Nestled back in her warm bed, Alice drifted back to sleep with a smile on her face.

 

** Prompt: Lifestyles **

It occurred to her one day that perhaps there were _two_ Alices.

Herself; one who chose to stay in this mad, wild wonder of Underland, and another Alice; one who did indeed drink that vile purple liquid there on the chessboard of the Tulgey Wood. One who chose duty and obedience over her own heart’s desire.

She wonders, somedays, what that other Alice is doing. What is her life like? While Alice number one is taking tea with the Queen, or with the Hatter and the Hare, is Alice number two taking tea with her mother? Her sister?

Is the other Alice happy? Is she content? Or, like Alice herself was before she took up residence in Underland, is she still watching her life pass her by?

 

** Prompt: Cleaning **

It started out as one night. In retrospect, Hatter didn’t notice it becoming a regular ritual until it was too late. 

Alice had simply shown up one day, as twilight was falling and the poor light was just beginning to make it troublesome for the Hatter to continue his stitches, with a basin of warm water in her hands, a couple of towels and a roll of fresh bandages.

The Hatter was so taken aback at her matter of-fact, businesslike attitude that he complied out of surprise the first time more than anything else.

He sat there, docile, as Alice, basin balanced on her knees, deftly but tenderly unwrapped his bandaged hands to reveal the scarred, dyed, thoroughly needle-picked skin underneath. She ‘tsk-tsk’d’ as she used the dampened towels to bathe the tender skin of his palms, his bruised knuckles, his pricked and calloused fingertips.

His surprise gave way to wonder, then to a sense of calm and peace that rarely visited itself on a volatile soul such as himself. So much so that he found himself feeling a little disappointed when Alice finished rebandaging his hands. Then, thoroughly businesslike, bid him goodnight and let herself out.

When she showed up the next day, at exactly the same time, Hatter didn’t bother to feign surprise. He merely laid aside his work for the day and subjected himself to her pleasurable ministrations. By the third day he had calculated a precise stopping point in his work so that he would be ready for her at the appointed hour.

It wasn’t until a week into it, when they shared their tentative first kiss over a bowl of tepid water, nearly upending it over both their laps in the process, that Hatter admitted to himself what an integral part of his daily life Alice had become.

 

** Prompt: light **

Tarrant Hightopp loved to hat.

He refused to believe that there wasn’t at least one type of hat that was flattering on any given person.

So when he set out to make the perfect hat for his Alice, he never anticipated having a problem. But every hat he designed for her just didn’t seem to do her justice in his mind.

Nothing would do for this stubborn project but to thoroughly study the subject.

So he did just that. He spent time with her in the gardens, wandering the grounds of the palace, even just taking tea together in the afternoon.

The funny thing was, every once in a while, he would witness the brilliant sunlight reflecting off her golden curls. So startling was the effect that it gave the impression of a golden halo. That taken together with her smile and her laugh … 

He was forced to admit a gracious defeat. 

 

**Prompt: Castle**

Alice was quick to discover that everything, absolutely _everything_ in the castle at Marmoreal was white.

She found this out when she questioned Queen Mirana as to why, when she had an entire castle to work with, had she given Alice the rooms directly next to the Hatter. Not that she was complaining, of course, him being such a dear friend and all, but it did seem strange that with an entire mostly vacant castle the queen was quartering the members of her court on top of each other.

The queen, who, unbeknownst to Alice, had the reputation as the most notorious matchmaker in all of Underland replied innocently that it was all such a serendipitous coincidence, and this was the first she’d heard of it.

Even the lies in Marmoreal were white.

 

** Prompt: Book **

When Queen Mirana had shown her the grand library at Castle Marmoreal, Alice had been suitably impressed. It was the Queen’s suggestion that Alice utilize it to help familiarize herself with her new home. 

Of course, she probably should have asked the Queen for some suggestions of titles to start with. As it was she was at a loss as to where to begin. So, being one who prided herself on not being easily intimidated, least of all by several roomfuls of books, she plucked one a random off the shelves and began reading.

Several hours later she emerged from the library, glassy eyed and thoroughly out of sorts, having quite underestimated Underland’s capacity for the nonsensical. She straightaway went to seek out the Hatter to put to him the question that was foremost in her mind at present.

What the hell was a Boojum? 

 

**Prompt: Simple Things**

Alice Kingsleigh used to love horseback riding. Few things she had found equaled the thrill she received from sitting astride a horse as it ran at a full clip. Sometimes, if they were going fast enough, she could almost imagine she was flying. The fact that she was flouting convention by refusing to ride sidesaddle, thereby scandalizing her long-suffering mother was an added bonus.

Her memories of horseback riding, however, paled in comparison to the exhilaration of racing through the woods on back of a bandersnatch. Something about having several tons of furry beast with gnashing teeth and claws at her command gave her a thrill that she was hard put-upon to find an equal to.

Today she was going further afield than usual. For today was not the aimless jaunt she usually indulged in. Today she had a very specific itinerary.

She started at the house of the Hare, even more dilapidated than when she had last seen it, abandoned by Hare, Hatter and Dormouse in favor of their new lodgings at the Palace at Marmoreal. She smiled as she gazed upon the tong table and chairs, still set for the endless tea party that was never going to resume.

 _It was here that I met him for the first time,_ she thought to herself wistfully. _Back when I was little more than an anklebiter._ And it was there she met him again as a woman grown. _And then shrunk and stuffed in a teapot,_ she thought with a chuckle.

She nudged her bandersnatch with her heels and he took off at a leisurely trot. _It was through here I traveled atop his hat._ ”Anyone can travel by horse or rail,” he had told her. “But the best way to travel is by hat.”

She started to smile at the memory, but stopped when she realized they had come to the site of the tragedy of Horunvendush day. She slowed the bandersnatch to a walk. _My poor Tarrant,_ she thought to herself, her heart hurting for his misfortune and for the obliteration of his family. _How alone you must have felt._ She knew he still had nightmares of that day.

She nudged the bandersnatch on till they came to the banks of the river were the Hatter had been captured by the Red Queen’s soldiers. Here was the river over which he had tossed his hat, Alice and all, in a desperate attempt to save her, and in the process sacrificed himself. _My dear Tarrant. You were so brave. You gave me the courage to go on myself._

She gave her bandersnatch a hard nudge with her heels and he bounded over the river in a single leap, continuing until Alice could make out the distant outline of Salazen Grum. It was there that she had made her bid to rescue the Hatter and failed. It was there that Tarrant had been tortured and nearly executed, saved only by the intervention of the Cheshire Cat. Even this far from the castle of the Former Red Queen, the sight of the place turned her stomach.

She turned the bandersnatch back East. She had one more place to visit on the way back to Marmoreal.

The Tulgey wood, with its giant chessboard and stairs going to nowhere looked the same as on the day she defeated the Jabberwocky. If she tried hard enough she could imagine it all over again. Her wearing that dreadfully uncomfortable silver armor, wielding to Vorpal sword as Tarrant and the rest of the forces of the White Queen clashed arms with the forces of the Red. _You saved my life here too, didn’t you, Tarrant?_ Alice remembered how he had stabbed the tail of the Jabberwocky to buy her valuable time. _If you hadn’t done that it probably would have been the end of me right there_

After one last look, she urged the bandersnatch home towards Marmoreal. She loitered for a moment on the bridge that led up to the castle proper. _This is where we met on the day before the Frabjous Day._ The day she came to know that Tarrant was still alive, not beheaded by the Red Queen as she had thought. She remembered her relief and joy at seeing him, and his joy at seeing her. She remembered his happiness at finding her restored to “a right-proper Alice size.” She laughed to herself at the happy memory.

“Alice!”

McTwisp was rushing down the path from Marmoreal like someone had set his rabbit tail on fire.

“Alice! You are late! So very late, it’s nearly noon!”

“I’m sorry,” she called down to him, “I had a few things I needed to take care of.”

“A few things indeed!” the hysterical rabbit cried in despair. “What could you possibly need to take care of on your wedding day other than your wedding?? Goodness me, you should be in your dress by now and here you are on the back of a bandersnatch! Everything is waiting on you, so do come immediately!” The neurotic white rabbit raced back towards the palace, muttering something about women and proper time management.

Her wedding day. The thought of it sent a thrill up Alice’s spine. She urged the bandersnatch on to the palace with all speed. Now that she had bid farewell to her past, it was time to meet her future.

 

** Prompt: Boat  **

Tarrant was no stranger to nightmares. Having witnessed the destruction of his clan at the hands of the Bloody Red Queen and having been subjected to torture by her minions, he had his share of nocturnal demons.

But this one was different.

He was at a busy seaport, standing on the docks, the hustle and bustle and crush of people was nearly overwhelming. He made his way down the pier, following the flow of humanity. After all, he had nowhere to go, had never even seen this place before. Had never seen the likes of it in all of Underland.

Many of the ships had seen better days; crusted with barnacles and sporting tattered sails. One among them, however, was so pristine in condition as to look nearly new.  
He caught sight of a familiar halo of blond curls. Waving a frantic goodbye from the bow of that particular ship was Alice.

He tried to call out to her, but he found his voice wouldn’t work. Where was she going? Deep in his heart of hearts he felt with a certainty that she was going far away and for a long time, perhaps never to return. He tried again to call her back, but again his voice failed him.

He began running down the docks, pushing his way through the crush of people, desperate to get to her, but he could see that he was already too late. The ship had unmoored and was disembarking for parts unknown, taking part of his soul with it.

He stood there on the docks, watching, his heart in his throat, until the ship, and Alice with it, disappeared into the horizon.

He awoke with a gasp and a start, crying out so loudly he awakened his sleepy eyed wife, who was asking him what on earth the matter was.

Wordlessly and mindlessly he sought out her lips with his own, his hands snaking under her nightdress, making her gasp in surprise. And when his hands found the most sensitive parts of her she mewled with pleasure. Finding her ready he guided her atop him and buried himself inside her in a single thrust. His mind chanting with every upward gyration _mine…mine…mine…_.

She came quickly, with a plaintive cry and a shudder she collapsed atop him. Half a dozen more thrusts saw his own completion, and he emptied himself inside her with a shout, buried in her to the hilt and holding her so tightly it was like he was trying to fuse them together into one being.

Alice managed to shift in his grasp so she was curled against his side, one leg still thrown unashamedly across his own. She placed a tender kiss to his jaw. “Not that I’m complaining at all, mind you,” she murmured contentedly, “but what was that about?”

Tarrant, in his mind’s eye seeing her waving goodbye from a ship bound for who-knows-where, never to return, held his wife with all the desperation he could muster.

“Never leave me.”

 

** Prompt: Music **

The first gift she ever received from the hatter had been her dress. She really had become quite fond of that dress, and thought it quite a shame that it was ruined on account of too much upelkutchen.

The second gift she received from him had been just as lovely.

He presented her with the bouquet of blue bellflowers with all the trepidation of a boy presenting a gift to his first sweetheart.

The flowers were beautiful, and let out lovely, musical bell-tones when Alice tapped the blossoms.

Her face lit up with wonder at the gift, and at seeing Alice’s joy, the Hatter’s own face split into a wide grin.

“Oh, Tarrant, they’re beautiful, but where on earth did you get them,” Alice asked.

“From the gardens, of course”

“But _how_ did you get them?” The flowers in the royal garden were notoriously snooty, and would never deign to lower themselves to be part of a lowly bouquet. Alice knew because she’d tried before.

The Hatter leaned into her conspiratorially and whispered in a slightly naughty voice, “My dear, didn’t I ever tell you, I’m nearly as quick with a pair of pruning shears as I am with a needle and thread.”

 

**Prompt: Gloomy**

Tarrant Hightopp awoke one night to the sound of his wife sobbing into her pillow.

This was something that alarmed him, to say the least. He had never heard Alice cry like that before, like her heart was being torn in two. 

The most disturbing part of it was, when he asked his wife what was the matter, it was all she could do to choke back her sobs long enough to get out a plaintive “I don’t know!” And then she would degenerate into tears again.

Tarrant called on anyone he could think of to aid him. He called the palace physician, who pronounced her in sound health. He pleaded with Queen Mirana to come visit his wife. The Queen, an accomplished healer in her own right, agreed immediately, but came to the same conclusion as the court physician. She pronounced it a malady of the soul and stated that time was the best remedy she could suggest at present. 

Tarrant, beside himself with worry as much as his wife was beside herself with grief, found it impossible to work that day. So he spent the entire day abed with his wife, holding her as she sobbed out a flow of tears that seemed endless.

Another world away, on a gloomy, rainy day, in a town called London, a group of mourners walked slowly away from a cold stone slab that read:  
 _Helen Kingsleigh_  
Beloved Wife and Mother  
May She Rest In Peace

 

**Prompt: Scarred**

Tarrant is covered in scars.

Alice finds this out the first time they make love.

At first she teases him about his hesitancy in getting undressed. She mistakes his shame for shyness. “This is not something one can do fully clothed, you know,” she says teasingly as she coaxes him out of first his jacket, then his vest, and finally his shirt.

When she sees the scars that run across his chest and back and arms she is momentarily speechless.

He mistakes her shocked silence for disgust and makes a grab for his shirt, desperate to remedy his sudden vulnerability.

She won’t let him have his shirt back.

Instead, recovering from her awestruck silence, she asks him what on earth happened to him that the world has left such cruel markings on his skin.

He tries to brush her off with a generality. “Oh, here and there,” he answers “War wounds from the great revolution,” he jokes.

But she is undeterred. An immovable object as usual. 

She demands an accounting for each scar, each mark. And as she receives it she places a feather light kiss on the mark in question. It is like she is going down a checklist, only instead of a pen doing the marking, her lips do the honors.

He shudders with each soft touch; a kiss for the mark left by Stayne’s whip, a kiss for the scar he obtained on Horunvendush day while trying to protect the Queen, even a kiss for the scratch left when Thackery broke a teapot on his shoulder. And when she is finished kissing every scar off her list, he is still trembling, but now for an entirely different reason.

And when he wakes the next morning, sprawled naked beside her, his war wounds on display for any to see, he finds the memory of each one weighs just a little lighter on his soul.

 

**Prompt: Spotless**

Unlike Tarrant, Alice’s skin is flawless like alabaster.

The scars delivered by her now beloved bandersnatch long since faded into nothing, her skin is pale perfection. And it drives her lover crazy.

Every time Tarrant sees that flawless skin laid out before him he is gripped with the mad desire to _mark_ it. To bite it, to scratch it, to claw his ownership into it. Hell, he would take a needle and thread and embroider “PROPERTY OF THE HATTER” on her silken thighs if he could.

All just to reassure himself that she is really his.

 

**Prompt: Dying**

When the Hatter didn’t make an appearance by the stroke of noon, Alice began to worry.

The first place she looked, of course, was his workshop. When she found nothing there but hatforms and mountains of cloth and ribbon and lace, she went on to question the castle’s inhabitants as to the whereabouts of its resident milliner. 

McTwisp was no help, the Queen simply answered her enigmatically that she was sure the Hatter would return in due time, and Thackery’s only answer to the question was to lob a teaset at her head. The Tweedles were singularly unhelpful. One swore he left the palace while the other insisted he did not. It wasn’t until she managed to pry some information out of Mallymkun that she realized the reason behind the Hatter’s unexplained absence.

As it was Alice made record time, leaping across the back of the bandersnatch and galloping full tilt to where she now knew where the Hatter would be.

When she came to the burned-out clearing she almost didn’t see him at first. Kneeling in the dirt and ash, he held his hat in his hands, muttering to himself what Alice took to be nonsense.

Alice dismounted from the bandersnatch and rushed towards him, her face a mask of worry for fear that he was hurt, or even worse had hurt himself.

He didn’t even register Alice’s presence. He simply continued his chant, rocking backwards and forwards in a rhythmic motion. “Ailbert …Alpina …Athdar … “

“Hatter!” Alice shouted, trying to startle him out of his stupor.

“Balfour … Breac … Bradana …”

“Hatter!” she called again, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Callum … Catriona …Cullodina … Donnchadh ...” his voice rose in pitch, taking on a hysterical note.

“Tarrant!” Alice fairly screamed, giving him a hard shake.

Tarrant’s looked up sharply at Alice, startled out of his stupor. “Why Alice. What are you doing here? And yelling loud enough to wake the dead.” He thought about that statement then let out a short burst of mad laughter. “Have you come to visit them too?”

“Oh, Tarrant,” she breathed, her heart bleeding for him. She knelt on the ground in front of him, paying not a thought to the ruin the dirt and ash would visit on her dress. “Mally told me you’d be here. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Why Should I?” he growled, his voice descending into a rough Outlandish brogue. “It isn’t your place to be here, girl. Not your clan. Not your right. Get you gone.”

“No.”

“Leave!” he hollered, his eyes burning with fury.

“No,” Alice answered softly. Meeting his fury with as much tenderness as she could muster. Unsure of what his reaction would be, but at a loss as to what to do, she reached out and pulled him into the circle of her arms, pressing her cheek against his own. She couldn’t help but notice his was wet with tears.

“You’re right,” she spoke softly into his ear. “It wasn’t me who lost family here, it was you. But _you_ are my family. As much family as I have in this world.” Her heart was like a stone in her throat and her own eyes threatened to overflow. “I don’t want you to suffer alone anymore.”

“Alice.” The brogue was gone, replaced by the Tarrant’s usual soft voice, this time choked with emotion. “They’re all gone. They’re all dead. And I’m the only one who even remembers their names.”

That did it. The tears were now streaming down Alice’s own face. She pulled away to cup Tarrant’s face in her small hands. “Then tell me about them,” she smiled through her tears. “We’ll remember them together.”

Tarrant looked at her for a long moment. So long in fact that Alice was afraid she’d said the wrong thing only to be pushed away again.

He nodded. And with some hesitation, began to speak.

He spoke of Alpina and Ailbert, of Moira and Morven. He told her of them all, from the oldest of the Hightopp Clan to the youngest. From who was the best singer, to who was the worst milliner.

He spoke to her of his long dead family as they sat there on the ground, hands entwined, until dusk took them.

 

**Prompt: Afraid**

As grounded as Alice and Tarrant’s relationship is in friendship and mutual affection, there is a constant undercurrent of fear.

Before Alice came along, Tarrant had no need to fear his madness. He followed wherever the twisted pathways of his mind led, not considering the consequences. Why bother? Everyone around him was mad too. That was the double edged sword of letting someone in, he supposed, when one was half mad. Before he had no one. As lonely as it had been, at least he never had to fear losing anyone.

Alice, for her part, feared her husband’s madness, but not for the reasons he supposed. She feared the seductive lure of permanent madness might one day take him away from her forever. She remembered vividly the day in the castle of the red queen when the madness had seized him. She remembered cupping his face and looking in his eyes and seeing the terror in there. He had been so close to the edge, teetering on the brink of taking refuge against the cruelty of the world in the warm blanked of insanity.

_Have you any idea why a raven is like a writing desk?_

She hoped neither of them ever found out.

 

**Prompt: Blood**

He pays for his life in blood.

He pays for it in slipped needles, in fingernails dug into palms and gouged into forearms. 

He pays for it in the occasional slipped knife, and sometimes without even the pretext of slipping. Sometimes the knife dances its way across his skin simply for the gratification of seeing that magical red liquid welling and flowing.

His blood did not flow with the rest of his clan’s. He survived. But he will make sure to pay for it in spades.

 

**Prompt: Why?**

“But why can’t I see her?” the Hatter asked plaintively.

“Alice says it’s tradition. Bride and groom can’t see each other before the wedding. It’ll bring horrible bad luck, she says.” Mallymkun briefly considers letting Hatter in. She wouldn’t mind seeing this marriage have a bit of bad luck. But she does so want her Hatter to be happy. And as maid of honor, her honor dictates she must do her job. So she brandishes her hatpin and threatens to give her dear Hatter a good poking if he doesn’t quit loitering around Alice’s door.

“But I have her wedding gift-“ he began.

“Then give it to her at the wedding, now off with you!”

The Hatter growled in frustration. “But it’s to be worn _for_ the wedding!”

“Tarrant,” an unmistakable voice called from inside, “I’m sorry, but we can’t see each other before the wedding ceremony. If you have something to give me, you must pass it though the door.” 

The door to Alice’s room opened a crack, just enough to allow Mallymkun to scurry inside, and for Alice to reach out one white lace-gloved hand.

Tarrant had a fleeting desire to grab that tantalizing hand and haul her out so he could see the rest of her. But it wouldn’t do to make the bride cross on her wedding day. Even a half-mad man knew that. So he gently placed tissue paper wrapped parcel in Alice’s hand and watched as both disappeared behind the heavy door. 

There was the crinkling of the tissue paper and a soft gasp, “Oh, Tarrant, it’s magnificent. You’ve outdone yourself I dare say.”

Tarrant fairly puffed up with professional pride. “Well it wouldn’t speak very well of me as a Hatter if my bride didn’t look her best for the occasion.”

“Thank you, Tarrant. Now I’m afraid you must go. I’ll see you at the altar.”

Tarrant weighed his options carefully. “When you say bad luck … is that only slightly bad luck, or really _really_ bad luck?

“ _Really, really_ bad luck, now go.”

The disappointed Hatter turned and went to await his bride at the altar.

 

**Prompt: Gift**

Having been refused an audience with his bride scant minutes before his wedding, the disappointed Hatter, turned to go await his bride at the altar.

“Oh, Tarrant,” Alice called from the crack in her bedroom door.

Tarrant rushed back, hopeful that Alice had changed her mind and decided to let him in.

What he saw was one slender, stockingless leg poking through the cracked door, revealing all the way to the upper thigh.

It was bare except for a single lacy garter, which made her look more nude than if she was wearing naught.

Tarrant’s eyes widened, their green color darkening with desire. “Lass,” he growled in his Outlandish brogue. “You better put that thing away before I grab it and make away with you, sod the wedding.”

Slowly, inch by inch, the tantalizing extremity disappeared behind the door.

“Well you gave me my present,” Alice purred. “It’s only fair I give you a preview of yours.”

 

**Prompt: Passion**

They sat through endless toasts, given by everyone from the Queen, to McTwisp, to Mallymkun as the maid of honor, and finally one from Chess (his was decidedly on the naughty side, the incorrigible feline).

Tarrant and Alice led with the first dance of the evening. Tarrant, by popular demand, performed what all declared to be the finest and most _vigorous_ futterwacken ever seen in Underland. All told, the bride and groom fairly danced the night away, their bodies pressed scandalously close together as they made their way about the dance floor. Tarrant took the opportunity to whisper wickedly improper things in his wife’s ear, causing her to giggle and turn the most delicious shade of red.

They ate a minimal, but polite amount of the wedding feast, each of them preferring to save their appetite for things more satisfying than food.

And when the opportunity presented itself, it was Alice who took it, beckoning to her new husband from the doors of the grand ballroom before she disappeared down the hall. Tarrant raced after her, ignoring the whistles and catcalls and well-wishes of the assembled throng.

He had a bride to catch.

He reached the hallway just in time to see the edge of Alice’s veil, disappearing around a corner.

He chased his laughing bride through the castle, twisting and turning until they reached their rooms, new and spacious, a gift from the Queen to the newly-married couple.

Tarrant caught up with his prey just outside their room, grabbing her roughly by the waist, spinning her around and pushing her up against the door so hard she left her feet.

Alice gasped with surprise before her lips were claimed in an intense, searing kiss. Tarrant’s hand snaked between her and the door, kneading her buttocks, grinding her against him and lifting her up, with the other hand he guided her to wrap her legs around his midsection.

“Tarrant!” she gasped. “As much as I’m enjoying this –oh, _gods_ that feels good- do you think we might continue it _inside_ the bedroom?” 

Supporting his wife with one hand, and groping for the doorknob with the other, Tarrant managed to get the door to their room open. Kicking the door closed behind him, he carried her to the bed. Laying her down freed his hands to roam her body. Clothes were shed; shirts and trousers and wedding dresses tossed unceremoniously to the floor, sacrificed to the cause of the couple’s immediate and complete gratification.

Tarrant kissed his way across her breasts. “I think I’ll be claiming my wedding gift now,” he growled in the rough Outlandish burr that drove Alice fairly mad with desire. “The only question is how do I open it?” His calloused, work roughened hands found her center and, without warning, slipped deftly inside. Alice cried out from the pleasure of it. “Shall I open in with my hands?” He kissed his way down her body until he was poised between her thighs, “Or shall I open it with my mouth?”

When his tongue met her wet center she thought she would lose her mind from the pleasure of it. He nipped and kissed and nuzzled until she could no longer take it.

“Tarrant! Please!” she pleaded breathlessly.

He moved to brace himself over her. Alice boldly reached between them and guided him to her center raising her hips in a swift motion that captured him in one stroke. It was Tarrant’s turn to gasp out his pleasure. Alice wrapped her legs around his waist and began to undulate her hips in a maddeningly slow motion that left them both quivering. She brought her lips to his ear. “How do you like your gift, my love? It seems to fit you rather well. It should; it was made only for you.”

Something in Tarrant broke free at her soft words and he began grinding his hips against hers, quickening the pace of their joining. Faster and faster they came together, until with a final lunge and a shout, Tarrant came into her, driving her over the edge in the process. And they both collapsed, quaking in the aftermath, gasping for breath, heady with the joy of it.

Tarrant rolled onto his back, taking her with him to nestle against his side. Kissing her forehead he whispered in a voice choked with emotion. “My wife.”

Alice smiled, pressing her own feather light kiss against his chest. “My Husband.”

They stayed that way, bodies entwined until sleep claimed them both. And even in dreams, they dreamt of each other.

 

**Prompt: Ring**

Alice couldn’t stop looking at it, the delicate silver band that encircled the finger of her left hand.

She was married.

The thought still made her heart skip a beat.

It had been so different than the visions she had growing up. Like all little girls she had fantasized about her wedding day. Her father giving her away into the arms of a handsome prince who would carry her off into the sunset.

But there had been no father to give her away. And in the place of the handsome prince of her dreams was a man with wild eyes and scarred hands, a mad mind and a kind heart. 

She had been married by a Queen, her Maid of honor had been a mouse, the best man had been a cat, and her wedding had been attended by what had seemed at the time to be an entire kingdom.

And just to think two years ago she had been so close to marrying the dullest man in the world because he was a _Lord_. And how could she possibly do better than a _Lord_?

She entwined her hand with her sleeping husband’s. He didn’t even stir. _Guess we wore each other out_ , she chuckled to herself. Her happiness threatened to overflow.

 _Let them keep their Princes and their Lords,_ she thought to herself.

She had landed herself a _Hatter_.

 

** Prompt: Destiny **

Alice Kingsleigh didn’t believe in destiny. Hated the very idea of it. Because who decided destiny? Was destiny decided by the stars? By a god she wasn’t quite sure she believed in? By general consensus or popular opinion? Because if that last one was the case she would be the future Mrs. Hamish Ascot right now and not Alice the Champion, readying herself for combat with a mythical beast.

But as she strapped on the glistening silver armor that would protect her in the oncoming battle, she began to doubt …well, her doubt.

It fit her so perfectly, this armor, there was no doubt that it had been made for her. Or at least someone the exact same size and shape as her. How was that possible?

If she really had been guided to this moment by predestination, that meant everything in her life, from her first trip to Underland as a child, to her trip to the Ascot’s, to her flight from Hamish’s proposal, to her failed attempt to rescue the Hatter from Salazen Grum, to her presence here at Marmoreal, none of it had been her choice. It had all been the work of some invisible hand steering her in some preordained direction. Like a pawn on a chessboard.

But hadn’t the Queen said it was her choice to do this? She could just as easily walk away and shatter destiny into a thousand pieces.

But she couldn’t.

Because this was no dream. She knew that now. Because the Queen, the Hatter, Mallymkun, McTwisp, Bayard, all of them were real. Their suffering under the Red Queen was real. And her chance to deliver them from it was real.

So, putting questions of free will aside, on the back of her unconventional steed, she galloped out to join the forces of the White.

She was greeted by the relief of a Queen, and the smile of a man who told her without words, that even though she had doubted herself, he hadn’t.

 

** Prompt: Follow **

When Tarrant saw her emerge from the Castle Marmoreal, all gold hair and silver armor glistening in the sun, he felt his heart swell in his chest. The woman before him was beauty and power and confidence, and _muchness_ personified. Totally different that the Alice who had so adamantly insisted, only days before, that she didn’t _slay_.

But he had never doubted for a second. His belief in her had been absolute from the beginning, even when no one else had believed. And now, on the day of battle, his faith was rewarded with a smile meant only for him. One that felt like a benediction.

In that second he knew he would follow her anywhere. To Hell. To Death.

To Victory.

 

** Prompt: Haunted **

Alice had started something she had no idea how to finish.

She had begun it on a whim one day, wanting to pay the Hatter back in some small way for all the kindness he had shown her since coming to Underland. For all the sacrifices he had made on her behalf. Essentially, she wanted to do something to show him how much she cared for him.

But it had backfired.

Now, whenever she closed her eyes, she could feel his, calloused, work roughened hands in hers. Even when he wasn’t there she could feel his eyes upon her; those green, luminous eyes that seemed to see right through her. Sometimes, she feared those eyes could see her very thoughts; could see that the act of washing and dressing his hands night after night was merely a pretext to be near him, to touch him, to watch him and be watched by him. She felt positively transparent under his gaze.

So haunted was she by the idea that he could read her thoughts that one day, she resolved to speak them aloud.

After all, what did she have to lose but everything?

 

** Prompt: Eternal **

Tarrant was acutely aware that their nightly ritual of changing the bandages to his damaged hands had taken on a decidedly intimate quality.

Alice was looking particularly lovely this evening, which didn’t help matters. She was wearing a white dress embroidered all about with little blue flowers about the hem. It was like a garden dancing about her feet when she walked. 

And the way she walked today was different than most days; confident and decisive. And her treatment of his wounded hands went faster tonight than usual. Alice was fairly brisk in her ministrations, businesslike almost. But when she was done, rather than picking up her basin and immediately departing, she lingered in her seat, basin full of water and old bandages still balanced precariously on her lap. In fact she sat there for such a long time, staring at him, that he was about to ask her if something was amiss. Then she spoke the words that turned his brain into a jumble and his heart into a drum.

“I should like very much to kiss you. Would you mind terribly?”

For a moment he thought one of the voices in his head was speaking out of turn and playing tricks on him, so he didn’t answer. 

When she repeated the question, her cheeks were pink with shame at her boldness, but to her credit her voice remained rock steady.

Dumbstruck, he answered honestly that if she should not mind kissing a man who was half out of his mind he should not mind her doing it, but warned her that he was quite out of practice, having put all of his energies of late into revolutions and such and not to be disappointed should his skill at the art not be up to par.

He would have rambled indefinitely were he not suddenly silenced by the feather-light weight of her lips descending on his. His eyes fluttered shut at the contact. It was not a kiss of passion, but rather was long and warm and sweet. So they sat there, lips pressed together, basin still balancing between them for what felt like an eternity. Or rather it only felt that way to Tarrant because he _wished_ it would last for an eternity.

And when Alice pulled back, her cheeks still pink, but now for a different reason, she thanked him softly and sincerely, collected her basin and left the workroom, closing the door softly behind her.

Tarrant didn’t know how long he sat there in that same position, the ghost of a smile gracing his features, his fingers periodically coming up to touch the place where her lips had graced his own.

“You’re welcome.”

 

** Prompt: Alone **

The Hatter never knew what hit him.

One moment he was having a pleasant, if slightly odd conversation with his wife, the next thing he knew Alice burst into tears and fled the room, slamming the door behind her. He was left sitting, dumbstruck and alone in his workshop, wondering what he had done or said that could have upset her so.

It had started out with Alice asking him the strangest question.

Alice had asked him if he would still love her when she was the size of a house.

Tarrant remembered being thoroughly puzzled by the question. He answered, quite honestly, that he preferred her to be her right and proper Alice size, and that having a house-sized wife might prove problematic in the practical sense.

That was when her lower lip began to quiver, her eyes began to tear, and before Tarrant could ask her what the matter was, she fled, her sobs so loud he could hear them disappearing down the hallway, even through the closed door.

Tarrant really was thoroughly vexed at the situation. He replayed the exchange over and over in his mind. Why should she want to be the size of a house? Was she having a craving for upelkutchen? Maybe that was it. The court physician had told him that often women had the strangest cravings when they were pregnant.

Wait.

 _Oh, dear_.

 

** Prompt: Hope **

When Queen Mirana gave the Jabberwocky blood to Alice, Tarrant’s heart became lodged in his throat.

He watched in silence as she contemplated the purple liquid, knowing that her decision in the next few moments could either keep her in Underland, with him, or take her away from him forever.

 _She would not even remember me_. The thought caused him an almost physical pain.

He loved her so, and she would not even remember his name.

That was the thought that made him speak. Part of him knew he had no right to try to influence her decision. The rest of him didn’t care.

“You could stay.”

Alice smiled at him. “What an idea,” she answered softly. “A crazy, mad, wonderful idea.”  
Hope rose in Tarrant’s heart. What would it be like, he wondered, to be able to spend time with her without a revolution hanging over their heads. To be able to talk with her at leisure. To laugh with her, walk with her, dance with her, fall even deeper in love with her than he already was.

“But I can’t.”

Tarrant’s heart, which had been racing, buoyed by hope, stopped. Time itself seemed to stop in observance of the weight of this moment. He didn’t hear the rest of her explanation. He just watched in well-disguised horror as she brought the purple vial to her lips and prepared to drink. She paused.

He waited.

And when she abruptly took the purple liquid and poured it out on the ground, she was smiling serenely, at peace with her decision.

And for the Hatter, his heart and the hands of time started anew.

 

** Prompt: Darkness **

There is a deep well of darkness in her husband. Alice knows this.

She knew this when she met him. Knew it when she first kissed him, first lay with him, when she married him.

Yes, sometimes it takes her aback; the depth and breadth of that well. The darkness is made up of many things: rage, guilt, fear, madness. All are a part of him.

She knows he fears the darkness inside himself, fears giving it reign, fears it taking over. Fears showing it to her. Each time his darkness manages to overwhelm him, she brings him back, and he always says he’s fine. But Alice can see in his eyes the fear, the confusion and the guilt. And it hurts her heart each time he doesn’t confide in her.

She wishes there was some way to reassure him. She tries it with words and actions, but he never truly believes. He never truly believes that she accepts the dark and the light in him. Probably because he doesn’t accept it in himself. And the dichotomy between his light and dark self is the catalyst for his madness.

But when Alice chose to marry him, she knew what she was getting into. When she embraces him, she embraces both the light and the dark, when spoke her wedding vows she vowed to love not just his lightness, but also his dark side. When she makes love to him, she loves the whole of him, all that he is, joyfully and willingly.

She just wishes she could make him understand that.

 

** Prompt: Celestial **

As Alice plodded around the dance floor in boringly endless and endlessly boring quadrille,  
she let her mind and her gaze wander.

What a beautiful day. Too beautiful to waste on formality and fake smiles and deadly dull dances with deadly dull partners. What she should like to do is tell Hamish to go sod himself and lose herself in the Ascots’ gardens. Maybe lay back in the grass. At the very least take off her tight and binding shoes and feel the soft green blades under her feet.

A pair of geese soared overhead, making their way across the perfect, cloudless blue sky. What would it be like to enjoy that kind of freedom, Alice wondered with a wistful smile. That freedom that was the very antithesis of corsets and stockings and quadrilles and stodgy Hamishes.

She was jerked out of her pleasant reverie when she collided with another couple.

Hamish had the expected response, apologizing to the other couple on her behalf and snapping rather harshly at her.

“I was wondering what it would be like to fly,” she offered Hamish by way of explanation.

The look on his face told one much about the young man’s personality. He answered her in a disdainful manner that fairly rankled. “Why would you waste your time thinking about such an impossible thing?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Alice answered defiantly. Then she sighed. It was useless trying to explain such things to a man like Hamish. Their class seemed to have a universal lack of imagination and ability to step outside the strictest of social conventions in word or deed.

Alice wondered what it would be like to be held by a man who could appreciate such things as wanting to fly, or to contemplate impossible things, or even to feel cool spring grass against bare feet. She doubted such a man existed in the world in which she lived. All the men she knew were such stodgy creatures that she doubted they ever harbored an impossible thought in their lives.

She briefly entertained the fantasy of travelling to another world, one freed from stifling social conventions, one where she might meet the kind of man with whom she could talk about flying and women wearing trousers and how funny it would be if everyone had to wear a codfish on their head.

She sighed again, making Hamish glance at her in annoyance.

_Talk about an impossible dream_

 

** Prompt: Beautiful **

“Well what did she ask you? Try to remember exactly.”

Tarrant furrowed his brow in concentration. “She asked me if I would mind terribly – no that’s not right - she asked me if I would still love her if she was the size of a house.”

Bayard nodded solemnly. “I remember that one. And what did you tell her.”

“Well,” Tarrant began rather sheepishly, “I told her that I quite preferred her the way she was.”

Bayard shook his head. “You didn’t?” he asked disbelievingly.

The frustrated hatter wrung his hands. “Well what in Underland should I have said?”

“My friend,” Bayard answered in his gruff voice, “there are only two answers you ever give a pregnant female: ‘I love you’ and ‘you’re beautiful.’ And if neither of those works offer her something to eat.”

The Hatter took in Bayard’s advice with all the enthusiasm of a disciple learning from a Great Sage.

“Pregnant females,” Bayard continued, “are temperamental and high-maintenance creatures. They need constant reassurance and their moods change quicker than the weather. When Bielle was pregnant with the pups I learned to stay on my toes and always have a compliment handy.”

“Is that so?” a decidedly female voice interjected.

Bielle, flanked by her pups, padded her way over to the two of them and sat herself in front of the Hatter.

“Mind the pups, will you dear, while I have a word with Mister Hatter here.”

“Yes, dear,” Bayard replied dutifully, knowing full well that after his wife had her talk with the Hatter she would be having a talk with _him_.

“Now Mister Hatter. What my husband told you is all well and good, but the most important thing you must do is simply _be there_ for your wife. Listen to her fears.”

“She’s afraid? What on earth for?” The Hatter asked in puzzlement.

“Why everything, of course. When I was pregnant with my pups everything overwhelmed me. In just a few months my life was going to change forever. Would I be a good mother? Would Bayard still love me when I was huge and heavy with pups? Would the pups be born healthy? Was I doing everything I could to make sure they were born healthy? Would the labour go easy or hard? All these questions are racing through your wife’s mind all the time.”

Tarrant felt a pang of guilt. “I had no idea,” he told Bielle.

“Haven’t you thought of what it will be like to be a father?” Bielle asked.

“Of course,” Tarrant replied.

“And does the thought ever frighten you?” Bielle questioned knowingly.

The Hatter was silent for a long moment. “Yes,” he admitted. "I wonder if a madman like me even has the right to be a father. I wonder if I can be there for Alice when she needs me to be.”

Bielle smiled. “Then share that with her. And let her share her fears with you. Go, now. Find her and do what needs doing.”

Tarrant thanked her for the advice and turned to leave. He paused.

“Um, Bielle?”

“Yes Mister Hatter?”

“Might I borrow your nose,” he asked sheepishly. “You see, my wife ran off, and at present I have no idea where she _is_."

Bielle chuckled. “My pleasure, Mister Hatter.”

 

** Prompt: Awe **

The Hatter never ceased to be amazed by his Alice.

She worked her charms on nearly everyone she met. Mallymkun had gone from being the human girl’s rival to her only slightly begrudging friend. The tweedles fought amongst themselves over who enjoyed more of her favor. The queen, having given her the official title of champion and court advisor, placed great store by her advice. And of course she had managed to capture Tarrant’s own heart so completely that the entire court could see how besotted he was.

One thing that amazed the Hatter more than most, however, was how she and no other claimed the slavish devotion and friendship of the bandersnatch who formerly terrorized the countryside at the bidding of Stayne and the Red Queen. The bandersnatch would snarl and snap at all others, except Queen Mirana, of course. It was impossible for any animal to be a true enemy to the White Queen. The Queen by her the purity of her nature was respected by all animal and plant life in Underland. 

But the bandersnatch’s heart really belonged solely to one person. The two jaunted around the countryside together as Alice explored her new home of Underland. This slip of a girl riding around on several tons of gnashing teeth and claws. She had even given the fearsome beast a name – one the bandersnatch seemed to have thoroughly taken to, and one that brought a secret smile to Alice’s face every time she used it:

Lady Ascot.

 

** Prompt: Chorus **

Things went from bad to worse.

One moment Alice was sitting in on the most bizarre tea party she had ever been to, watching the Hatter verbally flay the Cheshire Cat in some language she didn’t understand, and the next everyone was in a panic.

“The Knave!” the March Hare cried.

Suddenly the Hatter was pouring pishalver down her throat, fairly choking her, and then, when she was the appropriate size, stuffed her unceremoniously in a teapot.

“Well at least it’s not full of tea,” she muttered to herself. “They’d open the lid to find me drowned in Darjeeling.“ And what the blazes were they doing out there anyway? Singing?  
She could hear them singing some nonsense about teatrays and bats. And a man’s rough and cruel-sounding voice asking where Alice was. If he was unpleasant as he sounded, she didn’t relish being found by him. She’d take her chances with the lunatic trio.

Suddenly a loud snuffling sound filled her senses and the spout of the teapot was filled with what appeared to be dog-nose. The dog sniffed so strongly her hair wafted in the breeze. 

Fear gripped her heart. She was found out.

Then she heard the Hatter growl lowly, “Downal wyth bluddy behg hid.”

Almost as if responding to a signal, the dog disappeared, and Alice breathed a sigh of relief. Apparently the Hatter had dissuaded the canine.

Moments later the lid of the pot was lifted and the Hatter was peering in. She flushed in embarrassment. She was entirely naked except for the remnants of her dress, which she had swathed around herself like a blanket.

“Oh! Pardon me. One moment.” The hatter fished out a piece of her dress from the teapot, and with a flash of his milliner’s scissors and some needle and thread, combined it with a tea cozy and a doily.

He took the resulting creation and dropped it into the teapot, closing the lid to allow her some privacy to change. The dress fit like it was custom made for her. Which, in reality, it was. She couldn’t help but wonder how he got her measurements so correct simply by sight. 

She knocked on the teapot and the Hatter lifted her out with the greatest of care, setting her back in her seat. 

“Oh! I like it!” the Hatter exclaimed merrily.

She supposed she should begrudge him making her drink the pishalver and shoving her in the china.

But it _was_ a fine dress, and comfortable too. And he was smiling so pleasantly at her, so she supposed she could forgive getting stuffed in the teapot.

 

** Prompt: Sadness **

On her first night at Marmoreal, Alice found herself unable to sleep.

How could she sleep when, at this very moment, they could be executing the Hatter for the heinous crime of trying to protect her?

She wandered the halls of Marmoreal, wandered the grounds and the gardens, guilt gnawing at her soul. If only she had been faster, more capable, more like the champion he needed her to be and less like the girl she was, she would have succeeded in her quest to rescue him. 

When it came down to brass tacks, apparently, her muchness was still not up to par.

 _I left him to die_ , she thought. She could feel the burn of tears building behind her eyes. _I saved myself and left him to die._ Her mind refused to process the fact that even now he might no longer be living. This was her dream world, a world she envisioned with her own mind. And she refused to envision a world without him in it.

He would meet his death bravely; she had no doubt about that. Probably with a cry of “Downal wyth bluddy behg hid.”

In his last moments, she wondered, would he spare a thought for her?

She was in the gardens when the tears finally came. The more she tried to repress them the harder they came. She collapsed to the stone walk of the garden, her head in her hands as great sobs wracked her body. 

She cried for the Hatter, she cried for herself, and she cried for all the missed opportunities. All the times she could have told him what he meant to her.

But she never did. And now it was too late.

 

** Prompt: Overwhelmed **

Her day had started out horribly, exhaustion and rolling nausea seemed to be her permanent companions. _I thought they called it morning sickness because it happens in the morning. They might as well call it all-the-bloody-time-sickness._ She thought despairingly. 

She felt foreign in her own body. She had the most disturbing bouts of melancholy, tears coming seemingly for no reason at all. Her dreams tortured her. Last night she had a dream where her own mother came to her and told her she wasn’t fit to be a mother. After all, how can a woman who eschewed corsets and stockings and constantly had her head in the clouds be trusted to bring up a child. Then there were the dreams where she gave birth to an animal; a cross between a bandersnatch and a jubjub bird with a hint of jabberwocky. And once, just once, she dreamed she had lost the baby. She had awoken with heaving great sobs, burying them in her pillow so as not to wake her husband.

She was going mad.

She hadn’t even meant to ask the question out loud, but before she could stop it, out it came. In retrospect it had been a cruel, stupid question to ask. But when he answered the way he did she couldn’t help herself. The seed had been planted in her brain. Would her husband still desire her when she was round as a Tweedle? Would his love remain constant through the morning sickness, the cravings, the mood swings, the nightmares, the bouts or crying for no reason at all? Or would he give up in his frustration and withdraw from her?

 _I can’t do this alone_ she though despairingly as, sobbing, she ran from her dumbstruck husband, ran from Castle Marmoreal, ran until she reached the clearing in the Tulgey wood and collapsed, exhausted, and cried herself out.

 

** Prompt: Missing **

Bielle was every bit as fine a tracker as her husband, Tarrant realized. She led him swiftly from the grounds of Castle Marmoreal, following Alice’s scent through the Tulgey wood where, in a clearing full of soft grass and sunlight, littered with flowers, sat Alice herself.

She cut a tiny figure, sitting on the grass, her knees pulled tightly to her chest with her chin resting on top of them. 

Tarrant started towards her hesitantly, not sure what to expect. Bielle took the opportunity to depart back to the Castle. What was going to be said here was not for her ears to her.

Alice must have heard his footsteps, though he treaded lightly as he could. She didn’t bother to look at him. She simply kept her chin rested on her knees, staring off into the distance.

“How did you find me?”

Tarrant sat next to her in the grass, “I had Bielle lead me here. She has as fine a nose as her husband.”

Alice let out an indignant puff. “Isn’t that cheating, using a bloodhound to find me?”

Tarrant’s voice turned peevish. “I wouldn’t have had to if you had let someone know where you were going. What if something had happened to you?”

Alice’s voice turned rather pointed also, “I’m a grown woman, and I can take care of myself.”

“You’ll forgive me for being overly concerned, but the last time I saw you were running through the halls of the castle bawling and carrying on like a madwoman.”

Alice turned to him sharply, “And whose fault is that?”

When Alice saw the pained, genuinely concerned expression on her husband’s face, her anger deflated. “I’m sorry, Tarrant. I shouldn’t have even have asked you that question.”

For his part, Tarrant felt the familiar twinge of guilt when he looked into his wife’s eyes, reddened from hours of crying. “Well, with your permission I’d like to answer it again.”

Alice shook her head. "You don’t have to. I was just having a wretched day and I took it out on you.”

“I’d still like to answer again,” Tarrant replied. “Now that I actually understand the question.”

Tarrant took a deep breath. “The answer is yes, I will still love you, even if you are the size of a house. I will still love you even when you snap at me for no reason. I shall still love you when you get angry for no reason and cry for no reason, and if you should decide to throw teapots at me for no reason like Thackery does, I will continue to go right on loving you. You are my wife. And soon you will be a mother to my son or daughter. And I shall love you all the more for it. And someday when you are old and gray and have liver spots and are surrounded by a dozen grandchildren, I shall love you then too.”

The sincerity in his eyes made Alice’s own tear over anew. “Oh, Tarrant, I do so love you. And I’m sorry I’ve been such a beast. I’m just afraid. Afraid I don’t have what it takes to be a mother. I don’t know the first thing about it. Part of me is so happy, yet part of me is so terrified.”

Tarrant chuckled. “Likewise. My forte is making hats and starting revolutions. I don’t know any more about being a father than you do about being a mother. But I promise I will be there with you. Between the two of us I think we can gather enough muchness to raise at least a halfway decent child.”

Alice laughed and laid her blond head on her husband’s shoulder. “You and your muchness,” she said affectionately.

“Muchness is a very important quality,” he said in all seriousness. “It’s right up there with mostness and completeness. Ah!” Tarrant exclaimed, suddenly remembering something. He fished a kerchief out of his pocket, unwrapping it. “Would you like a scone?”

Alice looked at him in surprise. Well, she was hungry. “Thank you, dear.” She took the scone and bit into it. Quite good. “Do you always carry scones in your trousers?”

“Not as a rule, no,” he answered. “I did it on the advice of a friend. Though, I think I shall always have one on hand from now on.”

 

** Prompt: Clouds **

The eve before the Frabjous day, Alice and the Hatter stood in a comfortable silence on one of Castle Marmoreal’s high balconies. Looking out at the moonlight streaming through the gathering clouds, it was a picturesque sight.

“Have you any idea why a raven is like a writing desk?” the hatter asked rather mischievously. 

Alice smiled warmly at her friend, “I don’t know. Let me think about it.”

The Hatter’s voice lost its playful tone. “You know what tomorrow is, don’t you?”

Alice sighed. “Frabjous day. How could I forget? I wish I’d wake up.”

The Hatter looked at her, bemused. “You still believe that this is all a dream?”

“Of course,” she replied matter-of-factly. “This has all come from my own mind."

The Hatter ruminated on this; a slightly disturbed expression came over his face. “Which would mean that I’m not real.”

“I’m afraid so. You’re just a figment of my imagination.” She chuckled. “I would dream up someone who’s half mad.”

The Hatter grinned. “Yes, but you would have to be half mad to dream me up,” he pointed out.

The grin was contagious. “I must be then.” Her smile slowly faded. “I’ll miss you when I wake up.”

The Hatter was silent for a long moment. “Then don’t wake up.”

“What?”

“Stay here, with me, and don’t wake up. You should like living here, once the White Queen is again on the throne. Stay and dream forever.”

Alice shook her head, “You’re mad.”

The Hatter smiled widely. “Already established.” His smile diminished somewhat with his next words. “Is where you come from so grand that you wouldn’t even consider staying?”

Alice looked out at the cloudscape. “Actually no. At times it’s altogether wretched. My mother is always trying to control my every move, and she's trying to marry me off to a man I can’t stand.”

The Hatter’s expression became unreadable. “You’re to be married?”

Alice shook her head wistfully. “No. I’ve decided to turn him down.”

“Really,” the Hatter replied seemingly nonchalantly. “Might I ask why?”

Alice, after a moments thought, turned to him. “You remember how you said I lost my muchness?”

The Hatter shook his head. “Of course I remember, but you’ve certainly got it back. You’re definitely _definitely_ much muchier. You’ve got muchness to spare, bordering on mostness in fact. In fact I would go as far as to say that-“

“Hatter!”

“…fez… I’m fine.”

“Well,” Alice continued. “Hamish doesn’t have an ounce of muchness in his body. Is not even on speaking terms with it. His whole family’s like that.”

The Hatter frowned. “Sounds wretched.”

Alice nodded. “After meeting y-… everyone. After seeing all these amazing things. I couldn’t settle for that kind of life.”

The Hatter nodded in understanding. They each turned their attention to the horizon.

They continued to stand there in companionable silence, each one of them acutely aware that Alice had never answered the question of whether or not she would stay.

 

** Prompt: Tears **

Tarrant hates it when Alice cries.

She is a strong woman, the strongest he has ever met, so it takes much to reduce her to tears. There was a time when he could count those instances on one hand.

Then she became pregnant.

Overnight tears seemed to become her primary means of communication. Which is so much more troublesome than talking, because, as a communication tool, tears are left entirely up to interpretation. Half the time Tarrant is never sure why his wife cries. Happy, sad, tired; nearly every emotion seems to open up the floodgates. And he hates it when she cries. He hates to look into her red rimmed eyes and tear streaked face and know that he is powerless to stop the cause of her distress. Because half the time Alice herself doesn’t even know the cause.

So he decided quite early in her pregnancy that what you cannot fight against, you must work with.

It took him no time at all to make them. The simplest of projects. A flash of the scissors, a few passes with the needle and embroidery thread and he was done.

He presented them to her with little fanfare. A dozen kerchiefs in fine linen embroidered with her name in silver. And right under her name, on each one, in embroidery so small and tight one practically had to squint to read it:

_Please don’t cry_

Alice was so touched by the thoughtfulness of the gift, she burst into tears.

 

** Prompt: Blurred **

Alice found quite early into her life in Underland that Time, the notoriously unreliable little bugger, did not run the same as it did in her world.

Sometimes weeks went by in a blur, a day stretched into an eternity, an hour into an eon, sometimes time seemed to stop all together. In fact, on several occasions she was sure she lived the same day twice in a row.

Her first few weeks in Underland she was subjected, by order of the Queen, to all manner of lessons; from the history of Underland, to its laws and traditions, all to ensure she functioned at her best as one of the queens advisors. She imagined that poor McTwisp, her default tutor, would probably agree with her that those days lasted forever. Contrariwise, her first month of married life disappeared in the blink of an eye. And the nine months of her pregnancy, she adamantly attested, lasted at least five years.

So she learned to measure not by hands on a clock, but rather by teatimes and bandersnatch rides, by stolen moments with her husband, and by precious moments with her daughter.

Sometimes she looked back on her life in the other world and was astounded by the amount of living she had missed, simply because she had been waiting for the right time to come around. And she was grateful for the amount of living she gained when she began living on her own time.

 

** Prompt: Fools **

Tarrant Hightopp may be mad, but he is no fool.

He sees the way they crowd around her, ask her to dance, curry her favor. Trying to ingratiate themselves with Underland’s beautiful new Champion. He watches as she spends half the Frabjous day celebration being passed from one gentleman’s arms to another.

Her voice and her smile is merry, surely she is used to such attentions. A woman of her courage and beauty must have had no end of suitors in her own world. The Hatter feels the sharp pangs of jealousy, as each gentleman takes his turn with her. It rankles him and makes his Outlandish side want to go over there and rip her out of their arms and claim her as his own for the rest of the evening.

But he has no right to do that. This is all of Underland’s celebration, but hers more so than most. And nothing, not even seeing her in the arms of other men can dampen his joy at the fact that she has stayed. Underland is her home now.

As he leaves the celebration behind and heads for the quiet of the balcony he comforts himself with the thought that all these suitors, here at the palace for the grand celebration, will not be there tomorrow. Will not be there to see her first thing in the morning, fresh from a night’s rest. Will not be there tomorrow to take tea with her. Will not be there tomorrow at the end of the day to bid her goodnight.

But he will be.

 

** Prompt: Over **

Alice found him on the Balcony. The same balcony where they had shared companionship and conversation the night before. A night that seemed a lifetime ago.

“Tired of celebrating already?” Alice asked with a smile. The sounds of revelry reached them from below and inside. The sound of all of Underland merrily commemorating the Red Queen’s overthrow.

“Not all celebrating is done on the outside,” he answered cryptically. “What about you? Surely the celebration will be lacking if the Champion of the day is not present.”

Alice chuckled. “Don’t feel much like a champion. But then I’m not really sure how a champion is supposed to feel. I feel lucky. And relieved. And thankful. To you especially.” She turned to face him squarely. “Thank you for your help against the Jabberwocky. If you hadn’t done what you did, I shouldn’t have made it.”

“What squire wouldn’t do the same for his Champion?” he answered with a grin.

“All the same, thank you, Hatter.”

“Tarrant.”

Alice looked puzzled. “Pardon.”

“My name is Tarrant. Tarrant Hightopp. We never were formally introduced. Revolutions tend to get in the way of such things. Call me Tarrant.”

Alice blushed slightly. She didn’t know why calling the Hatter by his given name should sound so intimate, but it did. “Very well,” she smiled. 

“Thank you, Tarrant.”

“Thank you, Alice,” he returned.

“Thank me?" she asked. "What on ever for?”

He smiled a slight, gentle smile. “Why for staying, of course. I should have missed you, had you left us,” he admitted.

Her blush deepened at his honesty. And her own boldness when she reached out and took one of his bandaged, care-worn hands in her own.

“My dear Tarrant, why do you think I stayed?”

 

** Prompt: Immortal **

Alice thought that her celebrity as Underland’s Champion would die down after a while.

It appears she underestimated the gratitude of Underland’s population to the woman who delivered them from the grip of the Red Queen. In all honesty it made her self-conscious.

Strangers she met on the road greeted her with a “Hail the Champion!” or, slightly less embarrassing, referred to her as “Alice the White.” Soldiers, both the white and the former red, showed her special deference in passing, some bowing, some saluting. Alice never failed to blush every time this happened. If only her mother could see her now. Hailed as a military hero. The Champion of a revolution. It was all too much.

She confided her annoyance to her husband one day. He simply smiled and told her that since she refused to boast of the great service she had rendered, it was up to everyone else to do it for her. Then her kissed her and called her his Wife the Champion.

She swatted him playfully. “Don’t you start now!”

 

** Prompt: Dolls **

It didn’t take long for Alice to realize that the poor hedgehog was just the beginning. 

Every creature of Underland, every animal, every person, was a puppet of the Red Queen.  
From the flamingo croquet mallet, to the pig footrest, to the terrified frog butlers, not to mention all the toadies with their fake noses and ears and fake this and that, they all danced on invisible strings for the Queen’s amusement. Even the Tweedles. Even her dear Hatter was forced to dance to her tune, lest he not survive his captivity.

How could a monarch have such little regard for her subjects? How could a human being have such little regard for the suffering of other creatures? The Queen reminded Alice of her little boy cousins when they were younger; pulling the wings off dragonflies for the fun of it, or taking their slingshots to the poor sparrows for entertainment.

The Hatter had told her that once a champion arose to slay the Jabberwocky, the Bloody Red Queen’s reign would come to an end.

He thought Alice was that champion.

Well, Alice knew better, but she still couldn’t help but hope that the part about a champion was right. She hoped that someone would have the courage to do what needed to be done to topple the Bloody Big Head from her throne.

She just would not - could not - accept that she might have to be the one to do it.

 

** Prompt: Pretty **

Alice had never thought of herself as particularly attractive. She knew she was passing fair, but had never considered herself a beauty on par, say, with her sister, who had enjoyed a plethora of suitors in her day. Too bad she had settled on that dog Lowell.

Alice had thought that it was her mediocre looks, coupled with her unconventional ways that left her with the likes of Hamish for her only suitor. 

Which was why it surprised her so, the compliments that Tarrant showered on her. Sometimes he didn’t even have to say anything. Simply the way he looked at her with those wild, luminous eyes of his, drinking her in like a man with a powerful thirst, made her feel beautiful, desired.

And he made her the most beautiful creations. Ones she insisted she did not do justice. She remembered the heady rush she had felt when the Hatter insisted that, quite the opposite, it was his skills that could not do her beauty justice. She would have thought it idle flattery, but for those expressive green eyes, which gleamed with the utmost sincerity.

 

** Prompt: Singing **

Tarrant had a feeling this was how Alice had felt, when she believed her life to be a dream.

Only unlike Alice at the time, he never wanted to wake up from this dream.

He lay in bed, watching a scene so tender, it caused his throat to constrict ever so slightly.

Alice sat in her rocking chair by the window, moonlight framing her as little Lara suckled at her mother’s breast. Alice rocked slowly, caressing the downy head of her daughter, singing a low, slow lullaby Tarrant had never heard before:

_Always and forever_  
We’ll be free  
Always and forever  
Be with me  
We’ll have love aplenty  
We’ll have joys outnumbered  
We’ll have perfect moments  
You and me 

The expression on his wife’s face was serene, peaceful. He wanted to go to them, embrace them both, but he felt he would be intruding on something sacred. So he lay there, watching his wife and daughter, Alice’s lullaby eventually carrying him off to sleep as well.

 

** Prompt: Never **

“Hatter, you’re making this far harder than it needs to be,” Stayne informed him calmly. “Simply tell us the whereabouts of the girl and not only will the beatings stop, but you will be a free man.”

 _Lies. He speaks lies_ , the voices in Tarrant’s mind fairly screamed. _They will kill you. They will take your head. Just like they will take Alice’s head if they find her._

The Hatter spoke not a word.

Stayne’s calm façade cracked. “Let him have it!” he ordered the soldier angrily.

Lashes rained down on Tarrant’s bare back. He would have fallen to his knees if he were not being hung by his wrists from the ceiling. The metal of the manacles cut into the flesh of his wrists, which were already raw and starting to bleed.

Stayne raised a hand to stop the blows. He brought his face within inches of Tarrant's, obviously in a fruitless attempt to intimidate the Hatter _You great pillock_ , Tarrant thought to himself, _I have scarier things than you inside my own head_.

“Once again, Hatter. Where is the girl. Speak! Speak or be flayed alive. Your choice.”

The Hatter’s rage and temptation was too great. He spit in Stayne’s face, gleefully noting that he got him right in the eyes. And with the last of his strength he yelled in his Outlandish brogue. “Ye shall ne’er hae Alice. Ne’er y’hear!”

His outburst had the intended effect. Stayne’s face contorted with rage, all attempts at interrogation forgotten in the name of revenge. He grabbed the whip from his subordinate and began raining down blows on the helpless man. So lost was Stayne in his rage that it took him several moments to realize the Hatter had passed out.

Stayne, disgusted, ordered cold water thrown on the Hatter to revive him. When that failed, he ordered him thrown back in his cell. The lunatic had won this round. But he would have Alice’s whereabouts. His position in the Queens graces depended on it. He would get the information even if he had to pull it out of a corpse.

 

** Prompt: Taking over **

Alice had a theory.

Not a certainty mind you, but a theory. And just enough guts to take a chance on it.

Tarrant, her dear trusting Tarrant, suspected nothing.

Sure, he was pleasantly surprised when she met him at the doorway to their bedroom, naked as the day she was born and crooking her finger at him in a come-hither manner.

So absorbed was he in kissing her, touching her, not to mention the way she was undressing him, like a spoiled child ripping off the wrapper to get to the tasty candy underneath, that he didn’t notice their headboard was sporting a new accessory.

She led him towards the bed, at the last minute shifting their positions to that he toppled onto his back. She was on him in a flash, kissing him with all the passion she could muster, caressing his sensitive spots. She needed him totally distracted if her diabolical plans were to come to fruition. 

If he was taken aback at her sudden initiative, he was far too saturated with pleasure to care. The way she straddled his midsection, teasing him with the briefest contact, but eluding him when he tried to arch into her. It was driving him _mad_. So lost was he in the haze of desire that he didn’t realize she had guided both his hands above his head until it was too late. A quick loop and a pull and Alice, like a master wrangler, had trussed him securely to the headboard.

He looked at her in shocked silence for a moment. For her part, she looked like the cat that had just snagged the whole gallon of cream.

“Alice?” he asked warily. “Why am I tied to the headboard?”

She smiled mischeviously, “so you can’t escape, my dear Tarrant.” She pressed her lips to the precise spot on his jaw that she knew gave him shivers. 

He swallowed hard. “Why in Underland would I want to escape from you?”

“Because I,” she whispered in his ear, “am going to make you scream.”

Tarrant shuddered as her breath ghosted over his ear. His heart began to race. This was a different Alice than the one he was used to. He had seen glimpses of her in the past, flashes of boldness in past lovemaking. But this was Alice untamed end left to run wild with her desires. “I don’t doubt it for a moment,” he replied.

She kissed his lips softly, but briefly, not allowing him to draw her into a deeper kiss. Her lips traveled all over, mapping out his neck, his chest, his abdomen, all the while coming closer and closer to the part of him that was aching and hard. 

When she skipped over it , placing a kiss on his inner thighs, then down his legs, he let out with a string of outlandish curses that would have made Alice blush if she knew what they meant. Beads of sweat stood out on Tarrant’s forehead. He couldn’t take it any more. “For God’s sake woman, you’re killing me! Do someth-“

Do something she did, wrapping her hand around the heart of his desire, she placed a single teasing kiss on the tip, making her husband moan with pleasure. And when she took him into her mouth, he let out a gasp and groan like he was in pain.

She teased him with her ministrations, her lips and tongue touching him ever so lightly; building up his desire, but never giving him enough for release.

Tarrant had gone beyond cursing and had taken to pleading, straining against the bonds that held his wrists. He would give anything just to be able to flip her over and bury himself inside her.

“Alice … God … please!” he begged.

“Please what?” she asked slyly.

He growled in frustration and yelled, “You know bloody well what! Good god have mercy, will you?”

She smiled evily, “Not until you say it.”

“Please,” he begged. “Let me inside you. Please.”

Alice, her own desire reaching the critical point, straddled her husband and took him inside her ever so slowly, inch by inch. They were both panting from the strain of it. When he was sheathed inside her she began to undulate her hips, rising and falling at a maddeningly slow pace. Tarrant begged her to go faster, but his pleading fell on deaf ears.

Tarrant could feel his climax building ever so slowly. It was like being tortured with pleasure, one drop at a time. He was almost there. He could feel it about to break.

Alice came first, her inner walls gripping him tightly and pushing him over the edge, it was so strong he cried out long and loud, his wrists still straining against his bonds.

Alice collapsed on top of him, thoroughly sated. With one had she reached up and undid the hair ribbon that had him tied to the headboard. The first thing he did with his newly freed hands is grab his wife and kiss her hard.

“See,” Alice said in entirely too self-satisfied a manner. “Told you I could make you scream.”

 

** Prompt: Chocolate **

Chocolate dipped ladyfingers should be required teatime fare, Tarrant decided. 

_Especially_ on warm summer days.

It was quite a nostalgic teatime, indeed, Hatter, Hare, Dormouse and Alice, all gathered round the table enjoying afternoon tea and cakes. Mallymkun nibbled on a scone, while Thackery downed cup after cup of tea (Tarrant wondered the effect all that caffeine would have on the already jittery creature), while Alice found herself unable to resist the lure of the chocolate fingers.

Tarrant, for his part, was unable to resist the lure of Alice. The chocolate covered ladyfingers coupled with the hot day resulted in a lady with chocolate covered fingers. And what remedy was there for that but to lick them clean?

Tarrant watched, mesmerized, as Alice’s chocolaty fingers, one by one, disappeared between her lips. He watched her suck clean each offending digit, before reaching for another chocolate treat and starting the process all over again. 

He knew he was staring at Alice, but he didn’t care. Probably couldn’t look away even if he wanted to. All he knew is that if Mallymkun and Thackery weren’t there, he should dearly love to cross the table and offer to do the honors for her. He imagined his own lips sucking gently on those slender fingers, his own tongue laving them clean.

Alice had just started again the Ritual of the Chocolaty Fingers, when her eyes traveled down the length of the table and met with Tarrant’s own. He knew he had been caught staring, but something in Alice’s own eyes trapped him and held his gaze. Rather than avert his eyes, his stare intensified, magnified by Alice’s own.

A tiny, mischievous smile curved Alice’s lips as she cleaned each digit with deliberate, agonizing slowness. Her stare dared him to look away. He probably should, as his trousers were beginning to feel a little on the tight side.

The spell was suddenly broken by a couple of flying scones courtesy of Thackery. One lobbed off Alice’s head and she yelped with surprise. The other succeeded in knocking Tarrant’s hat off.

“Rent a room, the two a’ ye’!” The Hare barked before dissolving into gales of laughter.

Mallymkun left the table entirely, stating she was quite put off her tea and muttering something about sex fiends.

 

** Prompt: Long Distance **

Alice thinks of her mother often. Ever since Lara was born. Something about becoming a mother herself has made her look at her own mother in a new light. The distance in their hearts, Alice likes to think, has grown smaller. The thought helps take the sting out of the fact that the physical distance is so far. Alice remembers their frequent spats about corsets and stockings and social propriety in a much kinder light now that she is raising a daughter of her own.

Not that she’d ever force her daughter into a corset, and she could give a tinker’s damn whether she ever wears stockings.

But not everyone expresses love in the same way. She knows this now. And her mother’s way was with corsets and stockings and Hamishes. By trying to secure her daughter a place in the world, a social standing, the right to stand among her peers as a respected equal. And if corsets and stockings were the way to do that, well then that was the price to be paid.

She wonders often if her mother receives the letters she periodically sends.

She cannot bear to think that she hasn’t. She can’t bear to think that her mother is still waiting and wondering about the fate of her youngest daughter. That thought causes a knot of guilt to form in her stomach. A knot that intensifies when she looks in her own daughter’s eyes. 

How would she feel if one day Lara vanished without a trace?

The thought makes her want to weep.

 

** Prompt: I think of you **

Margaret thought of her sister often.

Like her mother, she was devastated when Alice never returned to the party at the Ascot’s. She had Waited, her heart in her throat, as the men searched the countryside for the missing girl.

And when they came up empty, she and her mother had cried in each other’s arms. 

Like her mother, she refused to believe that Alice was dead. Long after everyone assumed she had met her final fate in the woods surrounding the Ascot Estate, she maintained that Alice was alive somewhere. And one day she would return. Her husband called her a fool for refusing to face reality. 

That was the one and only time she told her husband to shut-up.

If Alice was dead, she would feel it. She was sure of it. And on the day her mother brought her a letter, written in Alice’s hand, she felt vindication, along with an overwhelming sense of relief. She read the letter several times. Her little sister was alive, not only alive, but happy and engaged to be married. She read it aloud to her husband, partly to show him that his wife was no fool. That she had been right.

“Might have known she run off with some man,” was Lowell’s only answer.

In that moment, Margaret wasn’t really sure that she even liked her husband, let alone loved him.

 

** Prompt: Sensitive **

Over the years, Tarrant has gotten more sensitive to his wife’s moods. After a year-long engagement plus three years of marriage (which included nine months of pregnancy and a year of parenthood), he would have had to be totally oblivious not to gain some insight into Alice’s temperament.

She is, in his mind, the perfect mother to little Lara. Attentive, loving, proud of her child’s every achievement, every milestone. The day Lara spoke her first word (“mama”, of course), she had run from one end of the Palace to the other in her excitement, telling the news to everyone she met.

As a wife, although they have had their share of spats over the years, Tarrant adamantly believes she should be sainted. His mad, outlandish side, although tempered a little by time and happy living, is still very much a part of him. Alice accepts this, accepts the whole of who he is. It is a gift that he is thankful for on a daily basis.

It is because he knows his wife so well that he is able to catch, intermittently, that faraway look in her eyes. He keenly hears her frequent silences. He sees her dab away a few stray tears here and there, confident that it goes unobserved. But he sees it.

That’s how he knows that something is wrong. 

 

** Prompt: Wait, what? **

She comes to him in his workshop.

One look in her tear streaked face tells him that this game of cat-and-mouse, this guessing game that they have been playing for months is over.

“Lara?” he asks.

She smiles a superficial smile, “Down for her nap.”

He gets up from whatever now unimportant project he was working on. He comes to her and frames her delicate face with its red-rimmed eyes between his hands. Her eyes close at the contact and she leans into his touch, drinking it in. Tarrant is encouraged by this. It is a sign that all hasn’t been lost.

“Alice. Love. What is it?” his voice has a begging quality to it, but at this point he doesn’t have enough pride to care.

She is so silent for so long that he wonders if maybe he is wrong. Maybe the guessing game will continue.

Finally she opens her eyes, and speaks the words that fracture his world into a thousand tiny pieces:

“I want to go home”

 

** Prompt: The Edge **

The Hatter, domesticated as he is, has always teetered on the edge.

And now he has been pushed off.

Alice’s statement is ringing in his ears. Home? He wants to laugh, but he can’t find the voice. She is home. Home with her husband and child. In the home they have made over the past five years.

What she means is she wants to go _back._ Back to the world she came from five years ago, a nineteen-year-old girl travelling through a world of dreams. 

In their life together he has denied her very little. But he will deny her this.

His voice is even, controlled. The look he gives her is tender. He even smiles.

“No.” 

“Tarrant, please listen to me. It’s only for a visit – to see my mother and sister – I miss them so badly. The Queen says it would be a simple –“

Something breaks in her husband and Alice finds herself slammed against the workshop door with so much force she momentarily loses her breath. Fingers dig into her shoulders, gripping her so hard they will probably leave bruises. His green eyes flashing brightly, he descends into outlandish tones, a sure sign he has lost control. “I said nae,” he growled. “Ye will nae leave me. And wha’ about our bairn? Would ye take her away from me? Or would ye leave yer own child behind?”

In a desperate attempt to bring him back to his senses she does the only thing she can think of. She wraps her arms around his neck and, clinging to him, presses her lips firmly to his. It backfires. Rather than bring him back to himself, it inflames him further. His Outlandish side, fueled by fear and anger and need presses her against the door, one hand kneading her breast, the other hitching her skirt up to her waist. She holds him close to her, refusing to remove her arms from around his neck, her gaze fused inexorably with his own. 

There is the divesting of clothing and a hurried frantic joining that causes Alice more sadness than pleasure. This is not about desire or love or the usual reasons two people become one. It is about desperation and fear and the overwhelming need for reassurance. So she holds him close, trying to convey to him without words that she is there, and that she is his. She will always be his, even if she is a world away. 

And when the act is finished, they sit entwined in a rumpled heap on the floor. 

“Why?”Tarrant asks in a low, sad voice, barely above a whisper. His madness has burned itself out for the moment, leaving confusion and hopelessness in its wake.

Alice kisses his forehead and rests her head on his own. Her voice is choked with emotion. This is hard for her, as well. To leave her beloved husband and baby daughter, if only for a few days, is not something she does easily or lightly. “I want to see my mother. My sister. To see their faces. To hold them. To tell them I’m all right and happy. I want to tell my mother she has a grandchild. I want to see her face when I tell her.” She sighs. “I wanted us all to go, but the Queen says there are laws governing who can go to the Overworld, and that it isn’t allowed.”

Tarrant pulls away and looks her in the eyes. He has always loved her eyes; cool and blue and deep. “And if I tell you not to go? If I forbid you? Will you leave us anyway?”

Alice smiles, framing his face in her hands. “And is that the kind of wife you want? One you have to chain to your side? And would you respect me for meekly doing your bidding? We both know I have far too much _muchness_ for that.”

The ghost of a smile passes over Tarrant’s face. “So when do you go?”

“Tomorrow. I’ll be back within the week. The Queen’s arranged everything.”

“Then will you do something for me?” Tarrant asked.

“Yes?”

He pulled her closer, burying his face in her hair. “Stay with me like this. For just a little while longer.”

 

** Prompt: Stray **

He can feel it.

The moment she leaves his world, he can feel it.

He has declined to be there for the actual departure of his wife, preferring not to see the exact moment when Alice ceases to exist in his world. Instead he sits in their room, watching Lara asleep in her bassinet. The child is blissfully oblivious to the fact that her family is in turmoil.

He did not know that he would feel it, let alone so keenly. It is like the bottom has dropped out of his heart, leaving him teetering and unsupported; without a base or a touchstone. The feeling is so sudden and startling that he gasps aloud. Struggling to quash the unwelcome emotion he focuses instead on his daughter. Her face, the gentle rise and fall of her chest, the small movements she makes as she dreams whatever it is that babies dream about. He reaches down and caresses the tiny head with its fine, pale hair. She looks so much like her mother. 

His fears, he feels, are very real. What if Alice is unable to come home to him? Despite the Queen’s assurance that the way will be open for her when she decides to return, the irrational part of his mind (and, being half-mad, that is no small part) refuses to be reassured.

And in the deepest, darkest secret place in his soul, no matter how much trust he has in his Alice, no matter how sure he is of her love, part of him is afraid she won’t want to return to him. Not when she is surrounded by her family and the comfort of the world she was born into. 

He is ashamed for doubting her so, but he is only human. And a man in love. And the losses engraved in his soul run deep. He can’t help but fear that the great joys he has found will be snatched away, not this time by a Jabberwocky or an evil queen, but by a world he has never set eyes on, and by people he has never met.

 

** Prompt: Once More **

Margaret had thought she would never see that face again.

When one of the servants ran into the parlor crying that Alice had come home, Margaret’s heart leapt into her throat. Jumping out of her chair, her needlepoint tumbling from her lap onto the floor, she rushed to the front door to find a woman standing in the foyer. She was taller than she had been at nineteen, and her face was leaner, having lost the last of its childish roundness. But it was the same mane of unruly golden locks, the same blue eyes that shone, the same voice that cried out with joy at the sight of her sister.

“Margaret!”

The two met halfway, throwing their arms around each other with exclamations of joy, tears streaming down both their faces. They made such a ruckus that the servants began to gather, watching the spectacle. Some of the older ones, who remembered the youngest Kingsleigh, shed a tear themselves at the happy reunion. The newer servants were left puzzled and asking their older counterparts who on Earth this new visitor was. Even Lowell was lured from his study upstairs and watched the exchange with nothing short of shock.

“Alice, my dear little sister, where have you been?” Margaret asked when the two found speech again.

Alice grinned widely, holding her sister’s hands tightly in her own. “I’ll tell you all about it! First, where’s mother? I simply have to see her.” 

All the joy drained out of Margaret’s face. The tears began to fall again, this time tears of sadness rather than joy.

Suddenly Alice knew. She just knew. And the knowledge was terrible.

She was too late.

 

** Prompt: Kiss **

It was a clear day. Warm and bright. Margaret led Alice to that place where she had hoped never again to stand, and then departed to stand a distance away; giving Alice the privacy she needed to say all that she needed to say. She faced the stone engraved with the names of her mother and father with lead in her heart.

A wave of denial washed over Alice as she began to speak. How could she address this hard, cold slab of stone as if it were her mother? It was absurd. Her mother was the very antithesis of hard and cold. She remembered, in her youth, likening her mother to such when she was being strict or laying down punishment. But behind her hard exterior had been a great well of love and kindness, especially where her family was concerned.

“Mother,” she began. “It’s Alice. I’ve finally come back.” Alice choked back the tears that were threatening to spill already. She had too much to say to fall to pieces now. “Margaret tells me you got most of the letters I sent you. I’m glad. I’m glad you weren’t left wondering whether I was alright or not. Tarrant and I are well. We’re still ridiculously happy together, as much as you and father were.”

She smiled weakly. “I came to tell you that you’re a grandmother. Tarrant and I have a little girl. Her name is Lara. She’s beautiful; she looks just like a Kingsleigh, with blond hair and blue eyes. She’s such a sweet child, she hardly ever cries. She’ll be a year and a half soon. It’s hard to believe time has passed so quickly.” The knot in her throat became too much to bear and the tears began to fall.

“I’m so sorry, mother,” Alice sobbed. “I’m so sorry I didn’t come back earlier. Why did I wait so long? I just thought you’d always be there. Margaret told me how much you wanted to see me again. I could have made you so happy just by visiting you. It never occurred to me that you wouldn’t be there. The time just never seemed to be right. And when the right time comes I’m too late.”

Alice let her tears fall, wetting the ground of her parent’s grave. She cried until there was nothing left. Until the sharp pain in her heart subsided into a dull ache.

“I’m going back home soon, back to my world. This hasn’t been my world for a long time. I’ll go back to my husband and my little girl. And I’ll bring your memory with me. 

“I want to thank you, Mother, Father. I want to thank you for my life and for helping make me who I am. You were the best parents a daughter could ask for. I love you mother. And I’ll tell Lara about you and father. She’ll grow up knowing all about how wonderful her grandparents were.”

Alice leaned down and placed a single kiss on her parent’s headstone. It was warm.

 

** Prompt: Decay **

The Queen has heard. One would have to be deaf not to have heard the rumors flying around the Palace at Marmoreal. 

Hatter’s gone Mad again. 

It’s Mallymkun who comes to the queen pleading for help. For her to intervene and save her dear Hatter from himself.

She finds him in his workshop, of course. This is where he spends the majority of his time, day and night, since Alice disappeared to the Overworld with a promise to return in a week.  
That was two weeks ago.

She finds the Hatter sitting at his work table, playing with his milliner’s scissors in what can only be described as a disturbing fashion. Snipping and snapping them in mid-air, it’s as if he’s trying to tailor the very fabric of reality itself. His world has become so unpleasant that he feels the need to remake it.

“Your Majesty,” he greets the queen without getting up, without even taking his eyes of the snip-snipping of his scissors. “I’ve been contemplating things that begin with the letter “D.” Would you care to join me?”

“Despair …” he begins. “Disaster … disappointment … disappear … decay … damnation … derange-“

“Dear …” the queen counters. “Desire … devotion … delight … destiny."

Tarrant finally looks at her, an endlessly tired expression on his face. His scissors snip one final time before coming to rest on the worktable. “I think mine are more apt,” he says sourly.

The queen gives a smile that is confident, comforting and beneficent all in one. “My dear Tarrant. Alice will return.” She shakes her head. “Do not doubt your own wife so. She wanted so badly for you to go with her. For you all to go together. She was heartbroken when I told her the laws did not allow it.”

He sighs. “And yet she went anyway. Without us.”

The Queen’s eyes grow just a little harder, and anyone who didn’t know her could easily miss the note of gentle castigation in her tone. “You alone, Tarrant, should understand her feelings. You who have lost so many. You begrudge your wife a chance to see her family one last time?”

Tarrant meets her gaze with his own, his eyes luminous and flashing with the light of his inner turmoil. “Your majesty, it is precisely because I have lost it once that I cannot bear losing it again.” 

“That reminds me!” he declared with a grin that is more grim than merry. “I think I shall move onto the letter “L.” Would you care to join me again?”

“Lost … leave … lonely …”

He is still reeling off his litany of “L” words as the queen departs, closing the door gently on the scene that is more sad than mad.

“Lament … lies … late … late … late …”

_Love._

_Please come home._

 

** Prompt: Underappreciated **

It is a misconception that size is a reflection of ability.

Because when it came to determination, devotion and sheer stubbornness, Mallymkun was a _giant_.

Alice knew this, which was why she had begged Mallymkun to look after her husband in her absence. The dormouse had tried very hard to resent Alice for abandoning her beloved Hatter. But she, who saw much of what went on in Marmoreal that others missed, had seen Alice’s suffering of the past few months. And as much as she was loath to admit it she agreed with Alice’s decision in principle. Best to do what needed to be done now, so she could get back to the business of being a proper wife and mother as soon as possible. Until then, Mally would see that the remaining members of the Hightopp family were taken care of.

It was Mally who, seeing Tarrant slipping further into his old ways, suggested to the Queen that a nurse be assigned to little Lara, to make sure the child’s needs were taken care of. It was done without delay.

It was Mally who arranged for all his meals to be brought to him, usually in his workshop, for he rarely left it. And it was Mally who sat there with him, encouraging, goading, and sometimes resorting to her hatpin to make eat his meals.

She rarely got thanks for her efforts. More often she got cross words and rudely worded requests to mind her own business. But she would not be dissuaded. For she had made a promise. And despite years of marriage to another, her love for her Hatter was still there. Perhaps in a different way, but she loved him still.

 

** Prompt: First Impression **

Anyone’s first impression of Margaret and Lowell’s marriage would be to conclude that theirs was a happy marriage. It was somewhat of an anomaly; a couple married for that long and still childless, but that was in the hands of God, after all, and surely he would grace them in due time.

Alice’s first impression of her sister’s marriage, granted she had the luxury of viewing from the inside, was that it was a sham.

And furthermore, her sister was miserable.

That fact, and of course her mourning for her dear mother, were the two reasons she tarried in the Overworld as long as she did. To provide comfort to her sister, who put up a brave front, but was clearly desperately unhappy, was something her mother would have done, had she been present to do it.

So she listened to her sister with a kind ear and an open heart. She listened when her sister told her of her husband’s late nights and her suspicions of his infidelity. She listened when her sister told her of her grief at mother’s death. How Lowell insisted they take up residence in the family home rather than sell it, even though the familiar reminders in every corner made his wife cry constantly. Margaret told her of how her husband blamed her for their inability to conceive a child even after all these years. This incensed Alice, who could no longer contain herself at this point, and blurted out that if Lowell wasn’t so busy sewing his seeds in the wrong fields he might have more success at home. Margaret had looked at her aghast. Whether it was because she had laid utterance to Margaret’s own suspicions, or because she had used such frank language to do it, Alice didn’t know.

And when Alice suggested that Margaret come with her, seeing how she was so desperately unhappy, back to Underland, where she would be treated with the respect she deserved, and perhaps find someone deserving of her, Alice was met with the expected response. Because Margaret was the practical one, the responsible one, the one who was the very soul of the supposed values of their class. She would not leave Lowell. He was her husband, till death parted them.

So for more than two weeks the sisters commiserated together, gossiped together, remembered their mother together, cried often and laughed not as often. And Alice listened, without judgment and with love.

That would be her last gift to her sister.

 

** Prompt: Disappointed **

Alice can tell that Margaret doesn’t believe a word of it. And it causes her heart to ache. 

She had warred within herself about whether to even tell her sister the truth. She could have lied. She could have claimed that her new home was in some remote country rather than an entirely separate world. Margaret had never shared Alice’s and their father’s bent towards the fantastical. She had been the practical one. She had been no-nonsense while Alice had been nothing but. In the end she decides on a heavily edited truth.

So Alice tells her tale, conveniently omitting most of the revolution and certainly any mention of jabberwocky slaying. She tells her sister of her life in the palace at Marmoreal, she tells Margaret much about Tarrant and Lara, trying to downplay the presence of talking animals and flora. She tells her of the beauty of the countryside, also omitting the fact that she often views it from the back of a bandersnatch named Lady Ascot. All things considered, Alice probably omits far more than she reveals.

And when her sister smiles and nods in all the right places, Alice can tell that true belief is not there. She does not blame her sister in any way for it. This is just the way she is made. Alice is just gratified that her sister doesn’t start calling up sanitariums, telling them to come pick up her loony sibling.

No, Margaret does not understand, is unable to wrap her mind around the very fantastical concepts that Alice is asking her to believe. Alice can tell, however, that her sister _wants_ to believe. Wants to believe that her little sister has found happiness and love even if she had to go to a whole new world to find it.

And for Alice, that will have to be enough.

 

** Prompt: Last Goodbye **

It was overcast and dismal on the morning they said their last goodbyes.

The goodbye really started the evening before, when Alice told Margaret that she had decided tomorrow was the day she would return home. Margaret tried to talk her out of it, of course. Asking her to delay a few weeks, then a few days. Surely, Margaret told her, her husband would not begrudge her a longer visit with her sister, more time to mourn their mother.

Margaret was loath to lose her baby sister so soon after finding her again. In Alice she had found the confidante that she had always wanted, now that her sister was mature enough to understand the trials and hardships of the adult world. 

In begging her to stay, however, she felt the sharp pangs of guilt. While she wasn’t sure how much of Alice’s story she believed, it was clear that when she talked of her husband and child that they were real and she missed them terribly. That was why, when Alice insisted she must leave tomorrow, Margaret didn’t press the issue of her staying too much. When Alice politely declined to stay longer, and asked simply for a ride to the Ascot’s estate the next morning, Margaret agreed, and let the issue rest.

The ride to the Ascot’s had been a tense one. Margaret tried her best not to show how desperately she wanted her sister to stay by her side. She felt like she was losing the last of her family. But wasn’t it selfish of her? Selfish to try to keep Alice with her simply because she was lonely and needed someone to be with now that her own husband barely paid her the time of day? The conflict raged within her.

It broke lose at the last minute. She could stand it no longer. As Alice told the driver to stop just at the entrance to the grounds of the Ascot estate, Margaret knew she was probably seeing her sister for the last time. She grabbed her by the hand and begged her, tears in her eyes, to stay with her. She knew she was being selfish. But in that single moment her need outweighed her propriety. 

Alice started to cry as well. And Margaret knew she would be haunted by those tear-filled eyes for years to come. When Alice wrenched their hands apart and fled, Margaret continued to call out, hoping against hope. It couldn’t end like this. Fate and God would not be so cruel as to make this the last memory she had of her sister; her tear filled-eyes and her retreating back as she ran off to god knew where. A magical world or the madness of her own mind.

Margaret was still crying, still calling her sister’s name, long after Alice became a faint shape among the trees, and finally disappeared.

 

** Prompt: Serenity **

She makes her way through the fringes of the Ascot estate with turmoil in her heart. 

Her sister had made the carriage trip with her, one that dropped her off just out of sight of the manor house. Alice preferred not to have to explain herself to any of the Ascots in person. And indeed it would require _a lot_ of explaining. 

Despite everything, despite the fact that Alice had made her determination to return home clear, her sister had made one more desperate effort to get her sister to stay. Alice was saddened by it. She had hoped they could say goodbye in a loving and peaceful way, but apparently that was not to be. Margaret, tears in her eyes, had begged her to stay, had held her by the hands and refused to let go. She had cried. In the end, crying herself, Alice had to wrench herself free and run, crying even harder as her sister called after her, begging her to come back. But she cannot go back. She has a home waiting for her. A husband and a child and a whole world waiting for her. 

It takes her a while to find the right place. And during her search, something strange happens. The turmoil caused by the ugly scene in the carriage begins to fade. A gradual calm descends. She does not doubt for a second that she will find the portal home, and that it will indeed bring her home. In fact, in her mind’s eye, she can almost see McTwisp, with his perfectly starched waistcoat and his pocket watch leading the way. 

She moves confidently through the tangle of the forest, slowly and surely. And when she comes upon that familiar tree, with its familiar gaping hole, the tears come again, this time of happiness.

She wastes no time. She steps off the edge and she is falling, surrounded by fantastical yet familiar things. And as the falls, unlike the panic of before, her heart is filled with a serene happiness. A joy that bubbles inside at the thought of seeing her husband and daughter again.

She is going home.

 

** Prompt: Heartbroken **

It was too difficult to sleep in the bed they had shared what seemed to be a lifetime ago. He had tried to sleep there the first few nights of Alice’s absence. The strangeness of her not being there next to him was so disconcerting that he took to sleeping at his work table.

When he found that a nurse had been assigned to look after his daughter, that took away his last reason for leaving his workroom at all. The guilt he suffered for abandoning his child compounded the fracture of his already broken heart. Looking at her was like looking at Alice in miniature. The grief and pain this brought to the surface made him fear his madness might come out in his daughter’s presence. So for her safety, at least that’s what he told himself, he stayed away. 

Time, the bastard that he was, was getting even for having been bested all those years ago by drawing the Hatter’s agony out as long as possible. The days Alice was away seemed to stretch into forever. And every day the certainty that she wasn’t coming back crept further and further into his heart. He had lost her. 

The meals Mallymkun brought him had no flavor, and sat like lead in his stomach. His tea was bitter no matter how many lumps he put in it. He choked his food down not through any desire to nourish himself, but because Mally, dear creature that she was, begged and pleaded and threatened and poked him with a hatpin when he didn’t.

He still worked, at times. He set out to make something and then halfway through realized he was making it for Alice. Everything he made always ended up being for her. Then in a rage he would unmake it. Shredding it with his scissors or sometimes ripping it apart with his bare hands.

She was dead to his world. Yet he still saw her, sometimes. Standing in the corner of the room, or sitting next to him. She was always smiling. One day it seemed so real that he actually was sure his wife had returned. A great joy rose in his heart only to be dashed when he realized she was only in his traitorous mind.

Was she smiling even now, he frequently wondered. What was she doing? Who was she with? What was she wearing? Was she happy? Was she (hope against hope) thinking of him, or had she settled happily into her new life without him.

He hoped she was happy. Even in his misery and anger, even in his heartbreak at her absence, even if she never came back to him.

He wanted her to be happy.

 

** Prompt: Leaving **

The news that the Hatter had left his workshop was startling enough.

The news that he had left the palace completely spread through Marmoreal like wildfire.

Mally went into a panic when he was missing from his workshop come breakfast time. She checked his quarters. He wasn’t there. Immediately fearing the worst, and wanting to waste no time, she went straight to the top. The Queen summoned her guards. Questioning each of them revealed that he Hatter had left the palace grounds in the late evening, heading west towards the Outlands. The guard who saw him leave heard him say only one thing:

“I’m going to be with my Alice.”

 

** Prompt: Punctual **

Alice had forgotten how awful pishalver tasted. She had also forgotten how hard the landing was after one jumped down a rabbit hole. It was like déjà vu; the pishalver, the upelkutchen, the tiny door and the tiny key. Although this time she took some sensible precautions to make sure she didn’t have to travel all the way to Marmoreal at an inch high and naked. Once through the little door, she reached back in for the upelkutchen and pishalver, and, with a little trial and error, managed to get herself back to the right size. Then she reached back through the door and fished out her clothes, which she had been careful to keep within distance. It would not do to show up at the palace in the nude.

Once the necessities had been taken care of, she had the luxury of taking in her surroundings. Her heart swelled with the knowledge that she was almost home. She greeted the flowers as she passed by and they answered with a cheerful hello. Some of the older ones greeting her by name. She could hear the flowers whispering amongst themselves, the older ones explaining to their younger counterparts that they had just been greeted by the White Queen’s Champion, of all people. The one who had saved Underland from the Red Queen. Usually such talk frustrated Alice, but for once she rejoiced in it. Who would have thought that talking flowers had become so normal to her that she had missed them while she was away? 

She hurried on her way, her mind thoroughly occupied with thoughts of seeing her family again. She hoped Tarrant wouldn’t be too cross with her for being so late. She couldn’t wait to throw her arms around him and kiss him senseless. She couldn’t wait to hold her daughter in her arms again.

She followed the familiar paths. Here was where she had been chased by the bandersnatch. Here was where she had met Chess for the first time. 

She was coming soon to a place near and dear to her heart; the house of the March Hare. It was there where Tarrant had first taken her hand. It was there, she was sure, where she first fell in love with him. Whether it had been as a child or as a woman of nineteen, it didn’t matter; she had fallen in love with him at fist sight. Suddenly the desire to see him became so strong it caused a lump to rise in her throat.

At last she came upon it; that long table set for a teatime that would never resume. God, she wanted her Hatter so bad she could practically see him, sitting there at the head of the table. In her mind’s eye she saw him so clearly. 

The Tarrant of her mind’s eye came alive at the sight of her, his eyes lit from within by joy. And when he rose from his seat at the table, and indeed began to _walk down_ the table, sending cups and plates clattering under his feet, taking the shortest route to where his wife stood, Alice began to suspect this was more than her mind playing tricks. And when her imaginary Tarrant grabbed her and kissed her with a passion that left her breathless, she realized that this was no imaginary Tarrant.

This was her husband.

She threw her arms around him with a sob of joy, knocking his hat off in her enthusiasm. 

Her very real Tarrant whispered in her ear, “You’re terribly late, you know.”

“I know,” she answered, tears streaming down her face. “Can you forgive me?”

His arms tightened around her waist and he buried his face in the mane of her hair. “Don’t I always?” 

 

** Prompt: Eternity **

It felt like an eternity to Mallymkun. This waiting. The queen had sent Bayard to search for the Hatter at Mally’s urging. In his depression, Mally had exclaimed, who knew what he was capable of doing to himself?

So all Mally could do now was wait. She thought to herself that if this was a taste of what Tarrant had been going through for weeks, waiting for Alice to return, no wonder he had descended as far as he had. 

During that interminable day Mally blamed everyone she could think of. She blamed Alice for leaving her husband, she blamed the queen for sending Alice back to the other world, she blamed herself for not keeping a better eye on her beloved Hatter. If she had been more diligent, this would not have happened.

And as night began to fall, so did Mally’s spirits. She sat on the high balcony, watching for any sign of Bayard or Tarrant. She was so intent in her mission that she didn’t hear the queen come up behind her.

“Mallymkun,” she said kindly. “Do not despair. Tarrant will return to us. You will see.”

Mally shook her head frantically. “You can’t know that. You don’t know how depressed he’s become. Why did Alice have to leave? Why did you let her go? If she hadn’t gone none of this would have happened!”

“All creatures are led by their hearts. Your heart leads you to care for Tarrant the way you do. Alice’s heart led her to go to the Overworld to see her family. Tarrant’s heart leads him now. We must trust in the people we love. If you follow your heart, it will not steer you wrong.”

Mallymkun thought this to be so many words. But as she sat vigil throughout the night, she began to wonder, and by the first light of dawn, as Tarrant, Alice and Bayard came into view of the Palace, she knew the queen had been right. 

Mally was the first to greet them just outside the palace grounds, embracing her Hatter as best she could given her small size, and then poking him soundly with her hatpin for making her worry so. By way of apology he let her ride the rest of the way to the palace on the brim of his hat. 

Her Hatter was smiling again, laughing again, he was himself again.

Mallymkun’s heart was full to bursting with the joy of it.

 

** Prompt: Falling in Love Again **

The first thing Alice did upon her return to the Palace was to reacquaint herself with every hair on her daughter’s head, every inch of her skin, every sound she made.

The second thing she did was to seek out Mallymkun. She got down on her knees in front of the small creature, and, with tears in her eyes, thanked her from the bottom of her heart for taking such good and diligent care of her husband.

Mally had wanted to be angry at Alice, but in the light of such sincerity, her anger dissipated. “Just see that it doesn’t happen again!” was the only admonition. Alice happily agreed.

The third thing she did was visit Lady Ascot. The great creature was beside herself with joy that her mistress had returned. Alice promised her a good long run tomorrow morning, for today, she still had much to do.

The fourth thing she did was to visit the Queen. She thanked her for allowing her the opportunity to see her family again. Thanked her also for keeping an eye on her husband in her absence. She apologized for being away from her duties as an advisor for longer than expected and hoped that the Queen would forgive her extended absence. The Queen, magnanimous as ever, forgave all, and welcomed back her advisor with open arms.

The fifth thing she did was to get a cup of tea from the royal kitchens, courtesy of Thackery. He made the _best_ tea, and she had missed it in her absence.

The sixth thing she did was take her daughter, and some of her toys and play in Tarrant’s workshop while he worked. Having them together as a family again filled her heart to overflowing and helped heal some of the grief she had felt since learning of her mother’s death. Every once in a while she would look up to her husband and catch him watching them, a gleam of happiness in his eyes, and his joy increased her own tenfold.

The seventh thing she did, after Lara was abed for the night, and dusk had fallen, was to reacquaint herself with her husband. With his lips. His skin. With the ways she could bring him pleasure. With the way their bodies fit together just so. With his moans, his cries, his whispers. With the sound of him gasping her name at the height of his passion.

She reacquainted herself with her world. And fell in love with it all over again.

 

** Prompt: Haven **

The first time Alice caught sight of the Palace at Marmoreal, she thought it had a divine presence about it. The shining white spires, after the dark and blood-red presence of the Red Queen’s Palace, made it seem like a veritable haven. And for the creatures of Underland, she supposed it was a haven. One where they could be treated with love and respect instead of as croquet mallets and footstools.

The night before the Frabjous day, she felt it to be a prison. A beautiful prison, a prison without bars, but a prison nonetheless. She could not leave. And on the morrow she would be asked to perhaps forfeit her life. It would be for a grand cause, but the result would be the same. She could never win a fight against as great a beast as the Jabberwocky. She was no champion.

Returning from the Tulgey wood, after defeating the Jabberwocky, hailed as a champion, the Palace seemed to Alice to be warm and welcoming. A place for her to rest her weary body and overwhelmed mind. And as she retired that night, in the rooms directly next to Tarrant’s (she would have to question the Queen about that), she thought about the choice she had made that day. As she lay in her bed, her covers wrapped snugly around her, she shed tears for the mother and sister she would not see again.

It took time. It took many cups of tea with Tarrant, it took many lessons with McTwisp, it took many arguments with Mallymkun, it took many conversations with the flowers. It took many bandersnatch rides until one day, returning from one such ride, she realized she was not returning to the Palace. 

She was returning home.

 

** Prompt: Lessons **

Alice could tell that McTwisp did not relish his role as tutor, especially to one as easily distracted as she. But the Queen had ordered that her newest advisor be instructed in the history and laws of Underland, and in her great wisdom the Queen had picked him to do it.

Alice, for one, did not relish her role as student. It was not that she didn’t want to learn about her new home, but it was so hard to sit there and listen to boring lectures when there was a whole world out there to explore. She remembered saying much the same thing to her governess when she had been ten years old. She had earned herself a rap on the knuckles with a ruler. She had always been one who wanted to go out and experience her own life, rather than sit at a desk and learn about other people’s, most of whom died long before she was born. 

Poor McTwisp was so frustrated at her inattentiveness that one day he threw up his paws and assigned her to simply read the material on her own, because certainly no amount of teaching on his part was doing a whit of good.

The newly liberated Alice promptly took her books outside and attempted to study there. But when the warmth of the sun and peacefulness of the landscape caused her to nearly fall asleep, she relocated herself to Tarrant’s workshop.

Did he mind, she asked, if she studied while he plied his trade? The Hatter replied that he would be rather delighted with the company. And so Alice read while he worked, once in a while asking him about something she read in her books. Tarrant, despite his mad streak, proved to be well versed in Underland’s history and proved a font of insight. 

The next day McTwisp was so impressed by her progress that he proposed to continue in this fashion; allowing her to engage in self-study with periodic check-ins by himself. Alice was relieved beyond measure.

She told Tarrant as much when she went to his workshop that day.

“If I had to endure one more day of lecture, I should have gone half-mad,” she said vehemently.

“I thought you already were half-mad?” Tarrant asked with a knowing smile.

“Well the other half then.”

 

** Prompt: Hold **

His instinct had been to hold on to her, to grab on with both hands and to never let go.

It had been hard to let her go back to her own world. Tarrant didn’t think Alice would ever comprehend how hard it had been. But he had let her go, knowing that to hold her back would cause resentment to fester between them. And how could he chain her down, when her fire and free spirit were two of the things he loved most about her?

When she returned so belatedly, and after much suffering on his part, his instinct again was to hold her close. But again, he knew he mustn’t impinge on her freedom. So he waited patiently as she gallivanted around the countryside on Lady Ascot, re-familiarizing herself with her world, even though every time he watched her leave the palace grounds it caused him a twinge of anxiety. 

She had come back to him, he reminded himself every time he felt the urge to wrap her in cotton wool to keep her safe and never let go. She had crossed worlds to come back to him and their life together. He reminded himself of how she had looked at him upon her return; like she had been dying of thirst and he was the water. And at the end of every day, when she was with him again, a little piece of his heart healed from the hurt of her absence.

 

** Prompt: Rebirth **

She sought out the Palace’s head gardener, a mole named, aptly, Greenwick. He was a pleasant, nearly blind fellow clad in overalls. His impairment did not adversely affect his livelihood, obviously, as Marmoreal’s gardens were an aesthetic splendor.

She came to him humbly, respectfully, telling him of her plight and her most fervent hope that he, among all creatures, could help her. Alice told him how highly the queen had spoken of his skill. The gardener fell easily before such flattery. It would be an easy thing to procure, he told her. He could even plant it for her in any part of the grounds she liked.

Alice thanked him profusely, but assured him that bringing her the item was enough. She would plant it herself.

And so it was that the next morning, wearing a pair of her husband’s old trousers, rolled up at the cuff and cinched at the waist, and an old shirt, she took herself to plant a tree. Greenwick had the sapling ready as promised, and, aghast at her attire, offered again to do the honors. Alice again thanked him, but declined. This, if it were to have any meaning at all, should be done by her hands.

It took her most of the morning to dig the hole, push and pull and twist the sapling until it fell into place, and then cover the base again with dirt. By the time she was done she was panting and sweating in the summer heat. Not content yet, she then took several bucketfuls of water and poured it around the tree, just in case it was thirsty in its new home.

She sat on the ground for a while, resting and taking in the sight of her handiwork. A fledgling willow tree now stood where once there was nothing.

Willows had been her mother’s favorite. She had loved the gracefulness of their hanging branches, the melancholy nature with which they wafted in a gentle breeze. 

She would never see her mother’s grave again. Of this she was certain. But now she had somewhere to remember her. Somewhere she could bring Lara to tell her about her grandmother and grandfather from the other side. New life would grow, to commemorate the old.

 

** Prompt: Perception **

Of all those at Marmoreal, excepting her husband and child, probably the creature most elated at Alice’s return was Lady Ascot the Bandersnatch. When the creature first caught sight of her mistress, Lady let out a great bellow and proceeded to cover Alice with wet, slobbery kisses. She left her mistress slightly moist, thoroughly disheveled and laughing with delight. Lady thought her heart would burst with love for her mistress when Alice threw her arms around the animal’s furry neck and hugged for all she was worth. Lady had hoped Alice would take her for a run right then and there, but she did not, leaving the bandersnatch slightly disappointed, but still happy.

The next morning, however, Alice arrived, as was her custom, and the two went for a grand run. They ran through woods and fields, upsetting the flowers and sending all manner of creatures scrambling in their wake. 

It was on the edge of the Tulgey wood that, amid all the other smells, Lady singled one out that was particularly odious. It was an old smell, a _mean_ smell, a bloody smell, one that Lady could not quite put her paw on. But it clearly was not one that she wanted herself or her Alice exposed to, so she steered clear, giving the smell a wide berth. To the bandersnatch’s relief, the smell faded into the distance, replaced by other, far more pleasant smells. 

She hoped she never smelt that particular smell again.

 

** Prompt: Double **

Thackery was never so flattered as when Alice had told him that he made the best tea in two worlds.

Most people, he knew, wrote him off as the mad cook. Thrower of pots and pans and tea trays. Just the shortsighted attitude he would expect out of people who were late for tea. 

But Alice, bless her heart, was always on time, sometimes with little Lara toddling in tow. He had been known to slip the wee bairn a treat or two when the watchful eye of her mother wandered elsewhere.

Thackery was the one who noticed, when no one else save her husband had noticed, that she had lost weight during her absence from Marmoreal to the other world. So he made sure that she had extra cakes on her tea tray each day.

It would not do to see his oldest friend’s wife waste away, he thought. Not after witnessing the miracle she had practiced on the Hatter; turning him from a mad, angry, volatile and solitary soul to a still half-mad, but content and companionable one.

He was grateful to her for the change she had wrought in the Hatter, for the peace she had brought him.

Such a thing was worth a thousand teacakes.

 

** Prompt: Carry you **

She was Alice. He would recognize that tangled mass of curls anywhere. On the outside, she was unquestionably Alice.

But on the inside, she was not quite. 

He could tell by the way she shrank away from all talk of jabberwockies and slaying, adamant that she was not the Alice of legend. No matter that she looked exactly like the figure in the Oraculum, no matter that she carried the same name as their champion. She remained steadfastly obtuse in her mindset.

No, she was not quite the right Alice, not quite the Alice of his memory, not quite the Alice she needed to be.

But as he carried her, perched on the brim of his hat, away from the Outlands and towards Marmoreal, he reminded himself that all things were possible. She may not have her muchness, she might not believe in slaying or jabberwockies, she may believe she was travelling through a land of dreams.

She might not be the right Alice.

But perhaps, with help, she could become her.

 

** Prompt: Blindsided **

Alice remembered the exact moment she realized she was in love with Tarrant Hightopp.

I had hit her like a terrible revelation, during her flight from Salazen Grum. She was clutching to the back of the bandersnatch, racing towards Marmoreal, a maddening litany repeating itself in her head:

_I left him. I left him. I left him. I left him …_

He was going to die. He was going to be executed. And she had just _left_ him.

He had protected her from the very start. Perhaps he was doing it because he still thought her to be Underland’s champion. She didn’t care why. The point was, he had. He had entrusted her with the story of his past, and now he entrusted her with saving his world.

Earlier this very same day she had been with him. Had held his face in her hands; had looked deep into his eyes and saw the pain there. She wanted to see his pain eased; his suffering ended. It wasn’t until now that she realized that she wanted to be the one to bring him that peace. Herself and no one else. Because she loved him. Was in love with him.

But she would never get the chance to try and bring him that peace. Because he would likely not live past the morrow. Her love would die. And he would never know.

Her tears blew away with the wind, as she raced towards Marmoreal, and away from Salazen Grum.

 

 **Prompt: Never Again**  
All Alice could think in the immediate moments following the slaying of the Jabberwocky was that she had done the impossible. Her sixth impossible thing. Her blood raced through her veins and her heart pounded with exhilaration. 

She descended the stairs in time to see the crown being placed on its rightful head, courtesy of the Cheshire Cat. Alice’s heart was glad. From what little she had seen of Mirana, it was clear that she was the very soul of kindness. She would be good to Underland and its denizens. Unlike her vile sister.

The very last of Alice’s high drained out of her at the thought of the former Red Queen. What was to be done with her? Was there any punishment severe enough for what she had done? Alice remembered Salazen Grum’s lake of bloody heads and wondered.

The newly crowned White Queen drew herself up, her bearing regal and confident. And for the first time Alice heard the woman speak not in her gentle dulcet tones, but rather in a voice that was hard and cold.

“Iracebeth of Crims, your crimes against Underland are worthy of death,” she said, advancing on her now powerless sister. “However, that is against my vows. Therefore you are banished to the Outlands. No one is to show you any kindness or speak a word to you. You will have not a friend in the world.”

Alice was impressed. The Queen had devised a fitting punishment for her sister who lived of the toadying and suffering of others. To be alone in the world would be hell for one such as her.

Alice watched Stayne’s pathetic attempt to curry favor with the new queen. The man was without shame, to be sure. Alice remembered the way she had accosted her in the halls of the Red Queen’s Palace. How he had tried to touch her, kiss her. She remembered the revulsion she had felt. She remembered, through the retelling of it, his part in the slaughter of the Hightopp clan, the Hatters family. He deserved punishment just as much as his former queen.

She watched with satisfaction as judgment was passed on him also: banishment. He would spend the rest of his days chained to the woman he formerly served. Also a truly fitting punishment.

It was with shock and, to her infinite surprise, a twinge of pity that she witnessed Stayne try to kill Iracebeth, an attempt foiled by the Hatter. She watched him beg for the mercy of a quick death, rather than a life chained to a woman that it was now clear he felt nothing but revulsion for. To be chained for the rest of your days to someone who hated you enough to kill you. In the end, perhaps death would have been more merciful for the both of them.

She watched as they were dragged away, the former Red Queen’s screams still echoing as they were taken, no doubt, to be deposited in the outlands.

It was over. The crown was in its rightful place, the slaying was accomplished, and never again would the Tyrant Red Queen visit her wrath down on the creatures of Underland. And never again would Alice have to see the pair that had hunted her, would have killed her, had nearly killed those dear to her. The pair that had caused her friends so much suffering.

She would never lay eyes on them again.

 

** Prompt: Commit **

Tarrant Hightop was having commitment issues.

Every time he set to making his wife an anniversary gift, he came down with a case of chronic indecisiveness. He had given her gifts of hats; he had given her gifts of dresses. Last year he had even made her a special suit for riding, complete with trousers so she could swan about the countryside unhindered by troublesome skirts.

He had set to making her gift several times, only to decide partway through that it just wasn’t right, so he would scrap it and start over again. When it came to his trade, and when it came to gifts for his wife, he was the very soul of perfectionism. And he was rapidly running out of time.

He was almost on the verge of giving up in despair, when a comment from Alice lit the fires of his inspiration. She had come in, not flush with her usual post-ride exhilaration, but rather distressed and sad. She explained that Lady Ascot had cut her paw on a sharp rock and Alice, being her dear sensitive self, felt horribly guilty and was quite at a loss. Tarrant suggested she go to Queen Mirana. Surely the queen, being so accomplished in the healing arts, could do something for the bandersnatch’s discomfort.

Alice immediately pronounced him brilliant, kissed him soundly, and went to seek out the Queen, totally unaware that she had solved both her own and her husband’s dilemma in a single stroke.

That’s how Alice’s anniversary gift came to not really be for Alice at all.

Come the anniversary, proudly but with little fanfare, Tarrant presented his wife with a finely worked, intricately embroidered bandersnatch collar. It was quite large, of course, being made for a fully-grown bandersnatch neck. It was embroidered with dozens of little hats, so she would think of him during her rides about the countryside. And in great letters, in fine silver thread was wrought the name:

_Lady Ascot_

 

** Prompt: Romance **

Queen Mirana had watched from the very beginning.

She had watched two meet, that day preceding the Frabjous day, out in front of the castle. Alice had been overjoyed to see the Hatter alive and well and the Hatter had been overjoyed to see Alice her right and proper size. She had seen two people with eyes only for each other, and she knew.

She had watched them, for a whole year, dance around each other. She had seen meaningful glances and blushing faces, and, more than once, a stolen kiss or two.

She was there when Tarrant proposed to his beloved; she had officiated over their wedding. And when Alice had come to her, a newborn daughter in her arms, and asked her to be something called a ‘Godmother,’ after a thorough explanation of the term, Mirana gladly accepted.

She had seen the grand romance of Tarrant and Alice Hightopp from beginning to full fruition, knowing she would never have one of her own.

For how could she ever devote herself to one person, when she had to devote herself to a whole kingdom of people?

She tried not to dwell on it, tried not to be dragged down by the loneliness of her lot.

And on most days, she succeeded.

 

** Prompt: Wash **

Alice loved Lady Ascot dearly, really she did. But one had to face facts.

She _smelled_.

And, as the mistress of the great creature, she vowed to rectify the situation. But, as bandersnatches were notoriously averse to water, she was quite at a loss as to how to go about it. The lake around Marmoreal was as good a place as any for the attempt, she supposed. Perhaps with some coaxing, she could ride into the lake on Lady’s back.

That was how, dressed in some of her husband’s old clothes, and armed with nothing but a bar of lavender soap and a bucket, Alice made a valiant attempt to prod, urge, coax, and entice her mount into the lukewarm waters surrounding the palace.

Lady would have none of it. She stood at the bank and refused to go any further.

Then Alice happened upon another idea. Perhaps if she went into the water first, Lady Ascot would follow.

Anyone looking out the Palace windows would have probably doubted Alice’s sanity. She was standing chest-deep in the balmy water, calling to Lady Ascot, who was growing more frantic by the minute. The beast was in a panic, trying to reconcile the presence of water with her need follow her mistress. She whimpered pitifully. Several times she moved to put a paw in the water only to draw it back at the last second.

Alice was crestfallen. “Lady, you simply must come in,” she called. “If you don’t get a bath, soon I won’t be able to ride you for the ghastly smell. Please, Lady!”

As if understanding her words, and as if the thought of no more rides with Alice was too terrible to bear, Lady Ascot at last made a great leap into the water, causing it to splash everywhere, thoroughly drenching Alice more than she already was.

But she couldn’t care less. She was laughing with elation as Lady waded over to her and then stood before her as if to say, ‘Well you got me in here, now what?’ 

Quickly, before Lady changed her mind, Alice soaped her up as fast as she could. The rinsing went rather harder than the soaping, because every time Alice would pour a bucketful of water over the bandersnatch, the creature would shake, sending water and soap flying everywhere.

At last she was finished. “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” She asked the bandersnatch.

As if in answer Lady took one great paw and brought it down on the surface of the water, sending a splash of water all over Alice.

Alice, not one to take such a challenge lightly, splashed her right back.

Over the course of the next half-hour, nearly the entire palace turned out on the lawns to witness a sight never before seen in Underland. A bandersnatch and his mistress frolicking in the water, splashing and laughing and bellowing and generally carrying on crazy.

One of the courtiers stuck his head in on the Hatter’s workshop, as he was busily churning out the latest fashion. “You’re wife has gone mad,” the man informed him in a rather snooty tone.

The hatter grinned and replied proudly, “Yes, I know.” And proceeded back to his hatting.

 

** Prompt: Honor **

Alice watched the face of her fiancé as he slept. Unlike his waking face, this face was totally relaxed and peaceful. It was beautiful in its serenity.

She had given herself to a man for the first time last night. She had given herself to Tarrant, the only man she would ever give herself to. The man she would marry.

Still, what would her mother think of her? To give her honor away before the wedding vows were exchanged. It went against everything she had been taught. It went against the values she was raised with; chastity before marriage. But she couldn’t bring herself to regret it. 

He had been so gentle and hesitant, fearful of hurting her even though, this first time, pain was inevitable. There had been pleasure too. And a soaring kind of joy that only came from becoming one with the one you love.

It was true, Victorian values would frown on what they had done. But she had belonged to him for a long time now. Ever since the day over a year ago when she realized she loved this mad, wonderful man who was resting beside her. She probably would have given herself to him long ago, had he but asked her.

For some part of her had known this day would come. Had anticipated it. Had yearned for it. Sod Victorian values.

She was happy.

 

** Prompt: Heartless **

She was so used to her daily rides through Underland that when Lady Ascot came up lame with a cut paw, rather than abandon her travels, she decided to continue them on foot. Admittedly, she couldn’t travel as far or as fast, but one noticed things when walking that one tended to miss on the back of a racing bandersnatch. Like the delicate nature and variety of the flowers, the feel of grass under bare feet and the pleasantness of the spring breeze.

She made herself a crown of flowers, apologizing to each flower she plucked, assuring them it was for a good cause. She had done this as a child, often escaping from the watchful eye of her governess to steal away to the gardens. Although back then the flowers hadn’t required the consideration of an apology. She even made a small crown to bring back for Lara. She looked forward to the day when Lara was a little older and might go for walks with her.

She had even asked Tarrant if he wanted to come with her this morning. He of course had been too busy. Oh well. She should have expected as much. It was funny, she usually enjoyed the solitude of her daily ventures, but today, for some reason, she had yearned for the company.

She bent over to pick one last flower. That was when the blow came. A sharp, unbearable pain in her midsection. She reached down to feel the point of a sword exiting her abdomen. Another jolt of agony as the sword was pulled out. That was when the blood came, soaking her dress. Alice clutched at her wound, as if by covering it with her hands she could keep the blood from flowing. She collapsed forward onto the ground.

“You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this moment!” a gleeful, mad, familiar voice chortled.

Using what little strength she had, she rolled herself over, trying to see who had done this to her. But her vision swam and grew dim. Her sight failed her, and she passed out.

All around her, the flowers began screaming.

 

** Prompt: Smother **

It had been a simple thing to do, really.

He had years of practice manipulating the former queen of Underland. So when he told her that his attempt on her life was a momentary insanity born from the shock of his Queen, the great love of his life, losing her crown and subsequently being banished, she was wary at first, but in the end, bought into his lies like she always had.

She had looked up at him with those bovine eyes. “At least we have each other. I should be thoroughly lost in despair were you not with me.”

“As would I, my queen.”

Iracebeth looked at him sadly. “No, not a queen. Not anymore.”

“To me,” he told her in what he thought to be a marvelous piece of acting, “You will always be my queen.”

Iracebeth sighed and embraced him. Stayne tried to suppress a shudder of revulsion.

They walked hand in hand, courtesy of the shackles that bound them together, through the wild landscape of the Outlands.

It wasn’t long before Iracebeth, soft and lazy creature that she was, begged for a rest. Stayne obliged, his face a mask of false concern.

He suggested she lie down in the soft leaves and have herself a rest. He would keep watch, he assured her.

She agreed readily. “My Stayne,” she caressed his face. “What should I ever do without you?”

Iracebeth lay on the ground, and indeed within a matter of a few minutes, was soundly asleep and snoring away.

This was the moment that Stayne had been waiting for, quickly, before she could react, his hands descended on her neck. Iracebeth came alive, her eyes bulging, her hands clutching at his arms, desperate to free herself. Her legs moved wildly, trying to come up to kick him, but he was out of her reach. As her desperation grew she reached up and clawed at his face, leaving a trail of bloody scratches. Stayne was not deterred in the least. He had been dreaming about this moment for years. Now that it had come, he felt elated. He found himself laughing as this prey’s struggles grew weaker and weaker and finally ceased altogether.

The former Red Queen was dead.

It had been a simple thing to do, really.

 

** Prompt: Cowboy **

The cries of the flowers carried across the countryside in every direction. A single word echoed all the way to the very gardens at Marmoreal, a message carried from flower to flower, from daisy to dandelion. The cry rose so loud and strong that all the inhabitants of Marmoreal were compelled to drop what they were doing and take heed to so grave a message.

“Murder!” the flowers cried out, calling it over and over in a terrible cacophony. 

The Queen herself immediately came out to question the flora. Her manner was so calm and serene, she managed to quiet the hysterical plants long enough to glean the terrible truth.

“Stayne the Wicked!” one of the roses cried. “Stayne the wicked has slain the Champion. Murder!”

The queen blanched. Her first thought was of Alice’s husband, still ensconced in his workshop at the far end of the palace, no doubt. He must not hear the terrible news until it was confirmed. He would sink into madness and grief, and no doubt want to pursue Stayne himself. She would not give Stayne the opportunity to slay another leader of the revolution.

She ordered the flowers to silence and immediately summoned a dozen of her best guardsmen and soldiers, as well as Bayard. They were to find Alice, she ordered, and two of them were to return her to the palace. The remaining ten would track down the villain Stayne, who had disobeyed his sentence of banishment. They were to capture him and bring him in chains back to Marmoreal. Alive if at all possible.

The dozen took to horseback. Bayard ran as fast as his four legs could carry him. He ran for Alice, dear friend to him and his family. And when the scent of Alice became tinged with the scent of blood, he ran even faster still, the horsemen hot on his heels.

They found her in short order. She lay face-up on a patch of blood-soaked grass, a garland of flowers still in her hair. The scent of death was not yet upon her, but she was unconscious and her breathing was shallow and rapid.

“She lives!” Bayard announced to the guards. One of them dismounted to aid her. He ripped a swath from his uniform and bound her bleeding midsection. The white strip of cloth immediately began to blossom with red. She let out not a sound as she was lifted gently up into the arms of a soldier on horseback. Towards Marmoreal the two soldiers raced with their precious cargo. 

The remaining ten soldiers and Bayard, vengeance in their eyes and hearts, took off in pursuit of the Knave of Hearts, Stayne the Wicked.

 

** Prompt: Intentions **

They caught up with Stayne on the western edge of the Tulgey Wood. 

He was a far cry from the Stayne who had terrorized the countryside under the reign of the Red Queen. His figure was gaunt, bordering on emaciated. His eyes gleamed with malice and madness. A bloody manacle dangled from one of his wrists, announcing to all yet another crime of which he was guilty.

He laughed as the soldiers surrounded him, swinging his sword wildly. His laugh was hysterical; the laugh of a madman.

“Have you come to kill me then?” he chortled. “Ah, but of course you can’t! The White Queen does not kill! So what will you do with me then?” he questioned the grim-faced soldiers. “Will you send me to bed without my supper?”

The captain of the guards stepped forward. “You’re right,” he answered. “Our Lady Queen does not kill. She has taken an oath.”

Stayne fairly danced with mad glee.

“We, however,” the captain continued, “have taken no such oath. And therefore have no intention of allowing you to leave this forest alive.” The captain addressed his men, “Stayne the Wicked was killed in self defense while resisting arrest. Wasn’t he, men?”

“Aye, sir!” the platoon answered in unison.

The captain brought him down with one blow of the sword. The nine more that followed, one from each of his men, exacted in the name of vengeance, would be conveniently overlooked in the final report to the Queen. So Stayne met his end. And he was buried at the edge of the Tulgey wood, in an unmarked grave, which Bayard pissed on for good measure. That was his revenge.

It was a fitting end for a man who had not only caused such suffering throughout Underland, but had killed his own Queen.

All Bayard could do, is hope that he hadn’t added Alice to his list of victims. 

 

** Prompt: Morose **

Nothing, no order from Queen or King or God himself could move Tarrant Hightop from his wife’s side. He sat by her sickbed day and night. Drinking little, eating nothing, sleeping seemingly never, he kept a constant vigil.

He had listened with a lead heart as the court physician, accompanied by the queen (for they had both taken part in the treatment of Alice’s grave injury), described the prognosis. Her chances were poor to fair. If infection were to set in, her chances of survival plummeted to almost nil.

His wife was dying. Killed by a man whom Tarrant had the opportunity to kill five years ago. If he could turn back time, he would run him through with that sword. Not once or twice, but a hundred times over. He would have killed him so thoroughly that not even his memory would survive.

But he could not turn back time. He could only care for his wife as best he could. He was the one who spoon-fed her broth three times a day, who was constantly checking her for fever, who changed her bandages when they needed changing. Who bathed her body with warm wet cloths to keep her clean.

And as the days turned into weeks, his heart despaired. He was breaking, little by little. Every day that Alice didn’t awake, a little piece of him died. Every time Lara asked him when mama was going to wake up, another piece of him went numb.

His wife was dying, and he was dying with her.

 

** Prompt: Melody **

He had heard her sing it to their daughter a hundred times. So often he knew it by heart. He had asked her once why she sang that particular lullaby and never any other. Alice had explained that it had been a wonderful memory of her childhood, her mother singing her to sleep with that song. 

The song, she told him, was all about love. And how she liked to think that the song could reach Lara even when she was sleeping. So that even her dreams would be filled with love.

Tarrant knelt at his wife’s bedside, clutching her small, pale hand in his own. His voice was thin and choked with emotion, and not very melodic. But he poured all the love he could muster into the single verse:

_Always and forever_  
We’ll be free  
Always and Forever  
Be with me  
We’ll have love aplenty  
We’ll have joys outnumbered  
We’ll share perfect moments  
You and me. 

 

** Prompt: Bright Lights **

She was so very tired. It was lonely here in this empty place, alone, with no one to comfort her. And there was pain. So much pain. It hurt to breathe, to move. She just wanted freedom from the pain, relief from the loneliness.

So when the lights appeared, they seemed a gift from god. She could feel the warmth, she could hear the voices of all those who welcomed her with open arms. Her mother, her father. They were there waiting for her. And the light made her promises. Freedom from loneliness, from pain, from this soul-crushing exhaustion. All would be well, the light promised. All she had to do was give in. Stop fighting. She had been fighting for so long. In the beginning she had been so sure that she had to fight, to not give in. To bear up under the pain. But surely she had suffered enough.

As if to counter the light, from far in the distance, a melody wafted on the breeze. It was soft and sweet. It enveloped her. It too made promises. Love. Boundless love. Love overflowing. Passionate love, but also the love of family, the love of children, of friends, of life and all its opportunities. There would still be pain, and it would be hard, and she would suffer. But she would be paid for her suffering in love.

She looked once again at the light. Listened once again to the melody.

And she made her choice.

 

** Prompt: Give **

Alice’s affliction, and the devotion with which Tarrant Hightopp cared for his grievously ill wife was the talk of the palace.

It was in times such as these, that true friendships are tested and proved sound.

All who knew the couple banded together to support them. The queen made her poultices and tinctures and potions to try and heal Alice’s battered body. Thackery made the nutritious broth that gave Alice the strength to continue her struggle. He also made the meals that Tarrant would have thoroughly ignored if not for the diligence of Mallymkun, who would not let her Hatter go without eating at least something every day. How would he care for Alice properly if he starved himself to death? This was the mantra she used on him. And it worked. The tweedles even made an appearance several times a week, with fresh flowers for Alice’s bedside.

Everyone gave as much as they could. Tarrant, in the fog of his single-mindedness did not see how many people supported Alice and him from the sidelines. Had he truly realized, he would have wept with gratitude.

 

** Prompt: Poison **

At first he thought it was a good thing, when one morning Tarrant woke from a light doze at his wife’s bedside to find her face suffused with pinkness. It was a change from the pale, waxy, almost porcelain doll-like complexion she had been wearing. His spirits were bolstered.

But as soon as they rose, his spirits were dashed. By mid day the light pink complexion had turned to the angry red. 

Tarrant thought he would weep from despair.

The fever came on quickly. It was the outward manifestation of the infection that was raging through Alice’s body; the poison that flowed in her blood. He immediately called for the court physician. The dour and unpleasant man, who had the bedside manner of a cranky bandersnatch, informed him that it was merely a matter of time.

In desperation, he sought the Queen’s counsel. A master of healers, she could perhaps offer him a sliver of hope to cling to. She made no promises, but went straightaway to begin preparing a tincture designed to help Alice fight the infection that gripped her body, as well as a potion to bring down her fever.

He prepared and administered cool compresses, opened all the windows so the fresh cool breeze might cool Alice’s fevered brow. And all the while he spoke to her, pleaded with her, begged her to fight, to be strong, to come back to him and their daughter and their friends and their life.

He could only pray that she heard him.

 

** Prompt: Colors **

It was a black day; the day Tarrant saw his wife’s body into the ground. His prayers, his ministrations, his love, it seemed, had not been enough to bring her back to him.

He had been given five years of bliss and light. Now he faced a lifetime of darkness.

Lara had been silent through the funeral, the concept of death beyond what her two and a half year-old mind could grasp. But she could feel the sadness, most keenly from her father. And as Tarrant stood there, babe in arms, long after everyone else had departed, Lara began to cry.

“Want mama,” she sobbed and buried her face in her father’s shirt.

He clutched his daughter to him. She was the last spot of color in his gray life. He would live for her, he decided. He would raise her to be a woman who would have made Alice proud.

He stared at the mound of the fresh grave. It seemed so unreal, that Alice, one so full of life and joy, could be buried under that mound of dirt. Forever. Tarrant’s eyes, which had been dry since his wife’s passing, finally began to mist over. He wanted to weep, to pour out his loss until the well of his pain was dry. He closed his eyes tightly, willing the tears away. He had to be strong for Lara.

When he opened his eyes, it was all gone. Sunk back into that part of his subconscious where his worst fears slept. Instead there was the familiar scene of Alice’s sickbed. And in it, Alice, her body still raging with fever, but still full of life. Still fighting. Still breathing. Still waiting to come back to him.

His life, which had been so black, blossomed into color again.

 

** Prompt: Sweat **

That such a tiny thing could cause him such elation.

He had spent weeks studying every aspect of his wife’s condition, every change in her color, her breathing, her temperature, the little movements she sometimes made in her unconscious state.

So to him, something so tiny was monumental.

A single bead of sweat stood out on her forehead. Joined by another, and another, until the sheets were damp with her perspiration. Her hot, dry skin was suddenly awash with moisture. Wonderful cooling moisture.

Her fever had broken. Tarrant nearly wept from the relief.

 

** Prompt: Hold your Breath **

Alice had defied fate, the predictions of doctors, and all odds to survive not only a lethal wound, but a massive infection and raging fever.

Her wounds were healing, her color was returning, all signs pointed to a recovery.

They why, Tarrant despaired, did she not wake up?

It had been a full month Alice had lain in her sickbed, a place that some would have made her deathbed by their predictions. Alice had defied them all.

At the first light of dawn on the fourth week, Tarrant could stand it no longer. On his knees beside Alice’s bed, his voice choked with emotion, he began to speak.

“Alice, Love. “ He took her small hand in both his own. “Don’t you think it’s time you came home? Lara and I are waiting for you. I’m waiting for you. We miss you. I miss you. I’m afraid my other half shall go mad with the wanting of you.” Tears began to escape from the corners of his eyes. “Please wake up. Please wake up. Please-“

The slightest sound, a sigh. Or was it a moan? It echoed like thunder in Tarrant’s ears. He gripped Alice’s hand even tighter. Holding his breath, staring into her well-loved face, he silently begged, willed, prayed for her eyes to open.

And when Alice’s blue eyes met Tarrant’s own, they widened with concern.

“Tarrant? Whatever is the matter? Why are you crying?” she asked, her voice hoarse from non-use.

The most beatific smile graced the Hatter’s face. He covered his wife’s hands with kisses, and wept with joy.

 

** Prompt: Fake **

Lara didn’t like her; this fake-mother.

She took care of Lara like a mother, fed her like a mother, tried to play with her like a mother, but she wasn’t her mother. She didn’t smell like her mother. Didn’t have her mother’s soft voice, didn’t have her mother’s laugh. Didn’t tickle her until she giggled with joy like her real mother did. Her real mother was sleeping. Like when Lara took her afternoon nap. But Lara never slept for that long. Someone always came to wake her up. So why didn’t someone just wake mummy up?

One time, when she went to visit her sleeping mother, she had tried to wake her up. Lara had called to her, reached up and tried to touch her, but before she could her father scooped her up. Mummy mustn’t be moved, he said. She was sick-sleeping. She must sleep until she gets better, he said.

It must be very important, this sick-sleeping. So Lara didn’t try again to wake her mother up. But as the days dragged on she became impatient. She cried more, threw tantrum after tantrum for fake-mother. Pouted at mealtimes and refused to eat. Perhaps if she misbehaved enough, her real mother would wake up to punish her. But even that didn’t work.

Then, one morning, fake-mother came to wake her. Fake-mother was happier than usual, dressed Lara more hurriedly than usual, took her to see her real mother earlier than usual. And when they entered the room Lara’s heart exploded with joy.

Mummy’s eyes were open. Her long nap was over.

Daddy had to grab her before she launched herself on her mother’s lap. Mummy was still ill, he explained. She will get better, but we must treat her gently.

“Kiss mummy?” Lara asked tearfully.

Her mother, in that voice Lara had been longing to hear, answered, “Kisses are definitely allowed.”

Daddy lowered her down and she covered Mummy’s face with kisses until Alice laughed. The sound was music.

Mummy was home.

 

** Prompt: Control **

Ironically, Alice spent much of her first week after finally opening her eyes sleeping. The fight for her life left her exhausted, her stores of energy drained.

It was not until the second week that she really began to awaken to the realities around her. The first thing she noticed was her husband, and she was horrified. His characteristic lanky appearance had been replaced by a gaunt, undernourished figure that bespoke of too many skipped meals. His cheeks had a hollow quality to them, and every fiber of his being radiated exhaustion. Truly, he looked like he needed a sickbed of his own.

She begged him to leave her to the care of another and rest himself. He refused, allowing no one to care for Alice but him. He did not trust his wife in the hands of another. 

So Alice, an expert at bargaining, informed her husband of the facts. She would eat only when he did. She would rest only when he did. She would get better, essentially, only when he did. 

So they ate their meals together, and after much prodding and coaxing and assurances on Alice’s part, slept in the same bed together.

“What if I move in my sleep? I could hurt you.” Tarrant protested.

Alice replied matter-of-factly. “Then I shall kick you soundly and wake you up.” She held his hand tightly in her own. “I’m hurt, but I’m not glass. You look twice as ill as I do. Now get in this bed before I decide to get cross.”

And so Tarrant crept into bed beside his wife, careful not to bump or disturb her.

Alice brought a hand up to cup her husband’s face. “I missed you while I was asleep. I think I heard you singing to me as I slept.” She grinned. “You have a terrible voice, but it was beautiful nonetheless.”

Tarrant brought his forehead to rest against Alice’s own. “I was so afraid,” he admitted, his voice choked with emotion. “If I should have lost you –“

Alice kissed him softly, silencing her husband. “But you didn’t. I’m with you now. Always.”

 

** Prompt: Permanent **

It was, in the end, worse than Alice had feared.

The court physician informed her that the scar she carried on her lower abdomen would most certainly be permanent.

Then, in that stuttering voice stodgy people always use when discussing something they find distasteful, he informed Alice that, due to the location and severity of her injury, it was unlikely that she would be able to bear any more children.

The news hit her like a punch to the gut. Her husband, seeing her shock and dismay, took her hand and gave it a supportive squeeze. What he really wanted to do was bend the doctor over and kick him in the arse for delivering the news so callously.

It wasn’t until the doctor left that Alice allowed the tears to flow. 

Tarrant comforted her as best he could, knowing it was probably woefully inadequate.

“I had always wanted to give you more children,” Alice told him, the tears streaming silently down her face. “I always dreamed of giving you a son. Someone to follow in your footsteps.”

He clutched her as tightly as he dare in her condition, trying to say with his body what his words were inadequate to convey. “I don’t need sons. I don’t need children beyond our beautiful daughter.” He pulled away and looked into her eyes. “I have you. I prayed for you to come back to me and you did. You and our daughter are all I need.”

She smiled weakly at him, an acknowledgement of his words. But the tears continued to flow. She mourned what she had never had, but had lost nonetheless.

 

** Prompt: Tender **

Alice was just about to drift off to sleep, her husband resting next to her in the bed, a carefully gauged distance away (she would be so glad when her wounds healed so she could sleep with her husband properly), when there was a gentle knock at the door. In poked the head of Lara’s nursemaid.

Alice was immediately alarmed. “What’s the matter? Is something wrong with Lara?” She shook her husband awake, fearing the worst. He opened his eyes blearily, and, seeing his wife’s alarm, focused his complete attention on the stammering nursemaid.

“No! No! Lara’s fine! I just can’t get her to sleep-“

A child’s voice interrupted insistently from behind the door. “Lara want a Lubby!”

Both parents breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s okay, you can let her in,” Alice said with a chuckle.

The toddler scampered in and ran up to the bed. “Wanna sleep with mummy an’ Daddy!”

Tarrant opened his mouth to say no, when Alice headed him off. “As long as you promise it’s just for this one time, and you’ll sleep in your own bed tomorrow.”

Lara jumped up and down with glee, “Promise!”

Tarrant, overprotective as always, looked at his wife worriedly. “Are you sure you can handle the thrashing of a two and a half year-old?”

Alice smiled. “I think I can manage. Besides, I’ve missed her so. And it’s only for this once.”

Tarrant, as usual, could deny his wife nothing. He dismissed the nursemaid with thanks and scooped up his delighted daughter, settling her down between the two of them. Lara immediately nestled under the covers. “Mummy sing lubby!”

Alice kissed her daughter’s forehead. “My, my aren’t we demanding?” she said indulgently.

“Pleeeeeease?” Lara pleaded.

“Pleeeeeease?” mimicked Tarrant.

Alice gently swatted her husband’s arm and Lara giggled.

Alice obligingly began singing the familiar tune that never failed to lull her daughter to sleep. The same tune that had lured her back from her own dreams not that long ago. The tune that had called her back to her life. Lara was soon off to her own land of dreams. Alice’s husband drifted off soon after.

The two people dearest to her by her side, Alice’s heart, which had been heavy since the sobering news from the physician, lightened a little. How could her heart be heavy when it was filled with so much love?

She had her husband, she had her daughter. She had her life. It was more than many people had. 

It would be enough.

 

** Prompt: Garden **

Mirana was fully aware of the grisliness of the task she was asking her soldiers to undertake. It was selfish of her, she knew. It was for nothing more than her own peace of mind and soundness of heart that she tasked her men to find the body of the hated former Red Queen and return it to Marmoreal for burial.

She also knew that many of them felt a proper burial too good for the woman who had been known as the Bloody Red Queen. But in this one selfish instance she did not care.

It took the men a while. All things considered, one of them being the sheer vastness of the Outlands, it should have taken far greater time than it did. 

What they found was not pretty. Eroded by time and the elements, the body of Iracebeth of Crims was barely recognizable, but for her by now tattered clothing. A few feet away from the body proper was her hand, hacked off by the villain Stayne in his attempt to rid himself of the woman who, from the very beginning, he had considered unloved baggage. At the sight of this, the stirrings of pity moved even the hardened hearts of the soldiers. As they wrapped the body for travel back to Marmoreal they did it with at least a modicum of respect.

Upon arrival at Marmoreal, their Queen tasked them with one final duty. To bury the remains of the Red Queen at a spot of Queen Mirana’s choosing on the palace grounds. This they did gladly and swiftly, for it meant that their gruesome task was at an end.

The grave remained unmarked save for a single red rosebush, planted by Mirana herself, and tended by none but her. And although she remained stone-faced to all who saw her, in the privacy of her rooms, she did cry. She cried for a woman she never really understood. She cried for the despot who had visited terror upon an entire land and its people.

She cried for her sister.

 

** Prompt: Letter **

Tarrant had been contemplating things that begin with the letter “R”

Reminder … Revenge … Regret

There had been a subtle change in his wife, ever since that fateful meeting with that odious doctor. The meeting where the couple learned that their family of three would always remain so. Her carefree air had been dampened, her smiles, more often than not, had a note of melancholy to them. She was lost in her own private mourning, and Tarrant found himself quite at a loss to do anything for her. He could only hope that Alice’s heart, as well as her body, would heal with time.

For his part, regret lay heavy on his own heart. Five years ago he had that bastard Stayne under his sword. Reason had stayed his hand. 

But now, in the warped and angry recesses of his mind, reason warped into cowardice. Why had he not been man enough to finish the evil villain off when he had the chance? Surely he should have foreseen that letting him live could come to no good. And his wife, his beloved Alice, had paid the price for his single act of cowardice on that chessboard five years ago.

His madness wanted to rage at the thought of it. Wanted to scream and rant and visit destruction. He wanted to punish himself as he deserved to be punished for the failure to protect his family, his only treasure. 

But Alice came first. And in caring for her he quashed his mad side with a viciousness that startled even him. So he cared for his wife, putting her first in her time of pain and sorrow. But every time she gave him that smile that was not quite a smile, his rage sprang up anew, and he knew it was just a matter of time before he could no longer contain it.

 

** Prompt: Sharp **

In time, the sharp pain that hit Alice whenever she moved dulled to an ache. Every day she felt a little stronger. And every day the desire to get out of that damn bed and move around grew stronger and stronger still.

One day, unable to stand it anymore, she asked her husband to help her so she might walk to the window and look outside.

Tarrant looked terrified at the very thought.

“Well you don’t expect me to spend the rest of my life in this bed, do you?” Alice asked frustratedly. “Besides, you’ll be there to help me, so it’s not like I’ll fall.”

With prodding and pleading and persuasion Alice managed to get her husband to agree. Slowly, she sat up, slowly she inched her legs over until they were hanging off the side of the bed.

With considerable help from her husband, she stood up on her own feet for the first time in over a month. Weak from disuse, her legs trembled from the exertion. Clearly her plans to walk all the way to the window were altogether too ambitious. But perhaps she could manage a few steps.

“Love, I think you should sit back down,” her husband protested. He supported her with an arm around her waist. “You’re shaking like a leaf.”

Alice shook her head. “Just a few steps. I need to start somewhere.”

She managed one trembling step before her legs gave out on her. Tarrant tried to hold her up, but the silk of her nightdress slipped in his grasp. He watched in horror as she fell to the floor, landing hard and with a yelp of pain.

“Damn and blast,” Alice cursed out her frustration.

Tarrant picked her up gently and deposited her back in bed, hovering over her and checking her for injuries.

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Alice said crossly, frustrated at her own weakness.

Tarrant announce he was going to get the physician so she might be examined properly. His voice was strained and his eyes had a tinge of the Outlandish to them. Alice didn’t want to let him out of her sight.

“But I’m fine!” she protested. But it was too late. Tarrant was already out the door, no doubt rushing like a madman in search of the doctor.

Alice cursed her own weakness. Her anger grew and grew until tears of frustration were trailing down her face. She cursed her weakness, she cursed her fate, she cursed Stayne, who had put her in this state. 

She cursed those who had brought this suffering down onto her and her family. For Tarrant suffered as much as she did. She had seen the light of madness in his eyes just now. Something she hadn’t seen in a long time.

She wondered who was more broken right now, her or her husband?

 

** Prompt: Language **

With Alice safe in the hands of the physician, Tarrant stepped away.

He could control himself no longer.

The voices in his head raged in the old language. The curses sounding all the more violent in Outlandish.

He shut himself in his workshop and began to visit destruction on anything and everything he could get his hands on, all the while cursing himself for his failures, for his weaknesses. He cursed himself for not killing Stayne five years ago. He cursed himself for not thinking, even for a moment, that the knave might be a danger to Alice. After all, Alice’s victory had led to the dethroning of Stayne’s queen and his banishment to the outlands. How could he have been so shortsighted as to not see the danger?

Years ago, Alice had sworn to him that when he fell mad, she would always be there to catch him. But how could he deserve her devotion, when he himself let her fall, literally and figuratively.

He had failed to protect his wife. How could he claim to be husband to her when he had let her down so completely? 

 

** Prompt: Darling **

The stodgy Doctor blanched at her demand. “I beg your pardon?”

Alice snapped, having no time to lose. “I said, carry me to my husband’s workshop, or find someone who can.”

“I’m sure that’s not necess-“

Alice glared daggers at the man. “Do it. Or shall I crawl there on my hands and knees?”

The doctor sighed. “That will not be necessary.” Really, he had never had such a stubborn patient. “I’ll find a guardsman to take you there.”

The doctor disappeared for a moment and returned with one of the palace guards, who dutifully scooped Alice up and, following her directions, carried her to her husband’s workshop.

Finding the door unlocked, Alice and her escort swung the door open to view the devastation. 

The room was in shambles. Shredded cloth lay all about, the work table was overturned, the chairs were broken. And in the middle of all the wreckage, was Alice’s husband, kneeling on the cold stone floor, sewing scissors in his hands, muttering to himself in Outlandish.

Alice asked the guardsman to put her down next to her husband. Then she thanked him for his pains and asked him to give them some time alone. The guardsman assured her he would be just outside the door should he be needed. Alice could tell that the man was more than a little shocked and concerned. But she couldn’t worry about him right now.

“Tarrant?” she called hesitantly. Suddenly all her bravado seemed to melt away at the sight of her husband’s pain. “Tarrant, talk to me. What is this all about?”

Tarrant stared down at his hands, red with fresh cuts from his own sewing scissors. He said in a voice so low it was barely audible, “I let you fall.”

Setting aside the scissors, Alice gingerly took his damaged hands and held them in her lap. Little spots of red blossomed on her white nightdress, but she didn’t care. “So I fell. It was an accident. All that’s hurt is my bum and my pride.”

Suddenly he gripped her hands with a fierceness that took her aback and met her eyes with his own burning green orbs. “Not just that. I failed you. I’m your husband. I should have been there to protect you.”

Alice smiled tenderly and cupped his face with her hands, meeting his stare fearlessly. “That’s a load of rubbish and you know it. Sexist rubbish to boot. What would you do?” she asked. “Wrap me in cotton wool and hide me away somewhere?” She grinned slyly at him. “I’ve slain jabberwockies remember?”

She took a deep breath. “You can’t blame yourself, love. I should know. I blamed myself for letting Stayne get to me so easily. For causing you and Lara such pain. For not being able to give you any more children as a result.” Tarrant tried to interrupt in protests by Alice silenced him with a finger over his lips. “I blamed myself for not seeing the danger I was in. But, you know, I finally learned something. It’s not my fault any more than it’s your fault. Stayne was the one at fault and he’s dead. And I’m alive, thanks to you. The only way he can hurt us now is of we let what he did rule our lives. And I don’t plan on doing that. I plan on getting well. I plan on walking, and running, and riding Lady Ascot again. I plan on playing in the gardens with Lara again. I plan on working for the queen again. I plan on making love to you again. I plan on falling in love with you again every day we’re together.”

Tarrant listened to his wife with an expression of adoration and awe on his face. This was her gift: the ability to calm his soul with nothing but her words and the touch of her hands. He leaned in and kissed her softly, a kiss of love and gratitude.

Alice whispered into his lips. “Please, love, don’t let anyone take that away from us.”

 

** Prompt: Every time **

Even though Alice was awake, the Tweedles still brought fresh flowers to her bedside every week. 

She thanked them profusely each time. Alice was touched by the pair’s thoughtfulness, and amazed that the contrary twins worked together long enough to get the job of picking the flowers accomplished.

Alice asked them once how they managed to get the garden flowers to agree to be part of a bouquet. Alice had tried numerous times, and had been rebuffed every time.

‘Well,” said Tweedledee, “we ‘splained we wanted flowers on account of to help make you well again.”

Tweedledum elbowed his brother. “I did the ‘splainin’. He just stood there like a lump.”

“Did not!”

“Right so, you did!”

“Boys, boys,” Alice interrupted. “I still don’t know how you managed to get them to agree.”

Tweedledum took over the explanation. “Well, tha’s all, really. They said that if it were for you, they would gladly let us pick ‘em.”

Alice grew a little misty at the thought. “Really? They said that?”

“Yup,” Tweedledee said. Then he looked thoughtful. “All ‘cept one. Said no way no how and something about knickers.”

“Yeah, wha’ was tha’ about?” Tweedledum asked.

Tarrant, who had watched the whole exchange in silence until now, cleared his throat and hastily herded the Tweedles out the door with thanks and shut the door behind them.

The tweedles could hear peals of laughter ringing out from the other side of the door.

The pair pouted. “Still dunno wha’ the knickers was all about,” Tweedledum said grumpily.

 

** Prompt: Pieces **

Bit by bit, day by day, hour by hour, the pieces of Alice’s life began coming back together.

It started with that walk to the window she had been yearning for. Then it continued with a walk to one of the balconies so she could stand outside in the fresh breeze once again. The day she was able to walk, with assistance from her husband, through the garden again, was a happy one. The day she was able to finally go out to the royal stables and see Lady Ascot for the first time in almost two months, that was a glorious day indeed. The great creature seemed to sense that her mistress was not her well self, and instead of her usual vigorous playing and romping, Lady settled for warmly nuzzling Alice’s hand. Alice had to wipe away a tear of happiness at the joyful reunion.

As her travels expanded, so did her world. Her life which had shrunk to the size of a bed, was gradually being reclaimed.

 

** Prompt: Fragrant **

Tarrant had tried to dissuade her. Had practically begged her not to go. 

She embraced her husband, and kissed him soundly, and told him not to worry. Stayne was dead and buried, and could not harm them anymore. It was important to her that she not let what he did curtail the joys she found in life. After much persuasion, and promises and a few more kisses, he relented, but told her in all honesty that he should be absolutely beside himself with worry till her return. She had been hardly out of his sight in the past two months.

So Alice kissed him one last time and promised that she would not be long. She also told him, with a gleam in her eye, that she would be back with presents for both him and Lara. 

So for the first time since her near brush with death, she mounted the back of the ecstatic Lady Ascot and took off at a leisurely gallop to the place that Alice half dreaded seeing again, but knew that she must face, or it would forever haunt her memory. 

It was with the spectre of fear in her heart that she faced the idyllic looking field that had been the scene of Stayne’s attack. She half expected the grass to still be stained with her blood, but of course it was not. Time and rains had washed it clean away. She took a deep breath and willed the churning anxiety in the pit of her stomach to quiet itself.

It was an innocent field of flowers. Nothing more, nothing less.

Remembering her promise to her husband, she quickly went about the work that had been interrupted two months ago by the point of a sword. She gathered and weaved the flowers like an expert. One for herself, one for her daughter, and one more besides. She would have loved to make one for Lady as well, but one that large would take longer than she wanted to make her husband wait. There would be other trips. Besides, she had imposed on the flowers enough for one morning. 

Once more she straddled Lady, and with her armload of flowers and took off for the Palace. She allowed herself to feel the exhilaration of the ride, after her long incapacitation. She was almost sad when it ended. She had to remind herself that she had tomorrow and the day after and the day after; an infinite number of days to ride her fill and enjoy the feeling of freedom it brought her. But today she had a worried husband waiting for her.

And she found, after leading Lady back to her home next to the royal stables, that he indeed was waiting for her in the palace gardens, with Lara in his arms and relief in his eyes. Lara squealed with joy when she saw her mother, and then again when Alice presented her with the crown of flowers, placing it on the child’s golden head. Her husband watched with surprise and amusement when she asked him to bend down as she slipped a larger crown of flowers over his hat. It fit him perfectly, the ring of multicolored flowers resting around the brim of his hat. Alice laughed as she took in the sight of her matching husband and daughter. Her joy threatened to overflow and she embraced them both.

Much to her amusement, and Lara’s delight, Tarrant wore his crown proudly for the rest of the day.

 

** Prompt: Faultless **

Alice’s first day back as the Queen’s Advisor did not quite go as Alice had planned.

The Queen welcomed her back, to be sure, but she had done so not in her usual warm and familiar way, but rather formally and distantly. Alice had little to say throughout the meeting, as she had been away for so long, but when she did speak up she was met with the same cool, formal tone. Alice was so distraught by the end of the meeting, that when Queen Mirana asked to speak to her in private she fairly jumped she was so tense.

When it was just the two of them, the formality was gone, replaced instead by an awkwardness that seemed out of place on the normally calm and confident monarch. 

Queen Mirana approached Alice and took one of her hands in both of the Queen’s own. “First,” she said, “I want to say how glad I am to see you well again.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty.”

The Queen continued. “And I want to say how sorry I am at all that happened to you. Stayne was at large due to my lack of insight. I did not foresee that he would try to take revenge. Because of my error, he injured you, one of my subjects and a member of my court, a hero of the revolution. I am sorry.”

Alice was aghast. Why was everyone, Alice herself, Tarrant, and now the Queen, so ready to take responsibility for the evil that was Stayne’s doing alone?

Alice took the Queen’s hands and squeezed them fiercely. “Your Majesty, don’t say such things. You did what was right at the time. Killing Stayne was impossible because of your vows, and it would have been wrong anyway. No one could have foreseen what happened. It was Stayne’s evil that was at fault, not your judgment. All the blame lies with him.”

Queen Mirana gave her a smile of gratitude at her kind words.

“And … Your Majesty,” Alice continued hesitantly. “I want to tell you how sorry I am. About your sister. I have a sister of my own. I can’t imagine how I would feel if … well, I am truly sorry for your loss.”

The Queen looked stunned. No one had offered their condolences to her since her sister was discovered to be dead. That anyone would do so was amazing. It was a gift.

Was Alice mistaken or were the Queen’s eyes misting over? 

“Thank you, Alice, for your condolences” the Queen said sincerely. “That will be all.”

Alice bowed and departed the council chambers.

Mirana waited until Alice left before she allowed the tears to fall.

 

** Prompt: Savior **

Tonight would be the night, Alice decided. She would not be put off any longer. Over a month of forced celibacy was more than one red-blooded woman could be expected to tolerate. They had slept together in the same bed like brother and sister, Tarrant barely touching her at all, let alone sexually, even though her injury was totally healed. But tonight would be different. Tonight she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Tonight she would take her husband and have her wicked way with him.

She waited until he was in Lara’s bedroom reading her a bedtime story, quickly she shucked off her dress, not bothering with a nightdress, and slid under the covers of their bed, naked as the day she was born and fairly quivering with anticipation.

She closed her eyes, feigning sleep, when she heard Tarrant leaving Lara’s room. She heard him shutting the door softly so as not to wake the child back up. She heard the rustling of clothing as he changed into his own nightclothes. All this seemed like an eternity to Alice.

Finally she felt her husband’s weight settling into the bed next to her. “’night love,” he whispered to her, thinking she was asleep. She felt a pair of lips ghost softly over her forehead.

 _Oh, Tarrant,_ she thought to herself. _If you think I’m going to be satisfied with that, you’ve got another thing coming._

Before Tarrant knew what hit him, Alice grabbed him by the front of his night shirt and kissed him with all the passion she could muster.

Tarrant jerked away in surprise, pressing against her shoulders to escape her lips. It was then that he noticed her state of undress.

“Alice,” he said in a strained voice. “You appear to have forgotten your nightgown. I suggest you go put it on before you catch cold.”

Alice slung a bare leg over her husband’s so he couldn’t turn away from her and she maintained her death grip on his nightshirt. “Oh I have a mind to catch someone all right,” she replied huskily. “But it’s not a cold.”

“Love.” Tarrant’s face wore a pained expression and his voice was so strained it cracked when he spoke. “You’re only just healed. I don’t think-“

“Exactly, I’m healed. So what the hell are you waiting for?” she growled.

“It’s been so long,” he admitted. “I’ve wanted you so badly, I don’t know if I can control myself. 

Alice brought her lips to the shell of her husband’s ear. “Then lose control,” she whispered. She pressed the length of her body against him. She could feel the evidence of his desire. To punctuate her words she rolled her hips against his own, the act sending a thrill of pleasure up her spine.

Something broke in her husband and suddenly she found herself flat on her back, her husband kneeling over her and stripping his nightshirt off over his head. “’Ye want me to lose control, ‘ye say?” he asked her in the Outlandish brogue that made her insides turn molten. 

She took in the sight of him, naked and towering over her, his desire for her prominently displayed. Her entire body thrummed with desire, the ache between her legs waiting for the cure only he could provide. She should probably be ashamed at how wanton she was being, but right now she was too desperate to care. “I want you any way I can get you,” she replied honestly.

With a growl he parted her legs and with one swift stroke, entered her completely. “Like this?” he asked teasingly.

Alice had to muffle her cry for fear of waking Lara, who slept jut the other side of the door. Her body sang with the sweetness of the moment. She felt full to bursting, and her heart swelled with the knowledge that she was finally one with her husband after so many months and so much heartache. The pleasure that coursed through her as he rocked into her was almost unbearable. “Oh, god, yes. Just like that.”

He thrust into her sharply and hard, each time hitting that magic spot inside her that made her toes curl. And when he leaned down to take the peak of one breast into his mouth she came hard, bucking against him and covering her mouth with her hand so she didn’t cry out from the sheer pleasure of it.

He pulled out of her so abruptly she nearly cried out from the loss. But when he guided her to turn over and get on her hands and knees, she eagerly complied.

And when he drove into her from behind she had to bury her face in the bed pillow to keep from crying out. He punched in and out of her with a ferocity that quickly had her climbing the pinnacle to another climax. He reached underneath her and filled his hands with her breasts, fingers tweaking her sensitive nipples. She continued to spiral higher and faster.

She knew he was getting close as his thrusts became irregular. She was teetering on the edge herself. Finally he gave a few quick, hard thrusts and stiffened behind her. The feeling of him climaxing inside her sent her careening over the edge again and she came with a whimper. God, her climax felt like it was going on forever. Finally it tapered out, the aftershocks still causing little pulses of pleasure to travel up her spine.

Totally spent, Tarrant rolled off of her and collapsed beside her on the bed. Alice wasted no time in snuggling up beside him, totally contented, and frankly exhausted. 

Tarrant’s hand cupped her face and he looked her in the eyes, his own face full of trepidation. “Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to be so … I lost control, really. God, please tell me I didn’t hurt you.”

Alice drew him in for a long, deep kiss, trying to reassure him with something more powerful than words.

“No, love, you didn’t hurt me. Rather the opposite, in fact. You saved me.”

Tarrant’s face was a mask of confusion. “Saved you?”

“Yes. You saved me when I was lying there dying. It was your song that brought me back. You’ve saved me from the very beginning. You saved me from a hopeless life in another world. You’ve given me love, a life, a beautiful daughter. You bring me joy every day we’re together.”

“That’s how you saved me”

 

** Prompt: Deeper **

The greatest love affair in Underland’s history began at a tea table full of loonies.

It survived revolution, misunderstanding, separation, and the icy jaws of death.

It grew stronger and deeper with each step.

It grew even as Tarrant sat in a cold dungeon. It grew as he faced the executioners axe. It grew even as Alice faced the Jabberwocky. It grew as she threw away the vile purple liquid that would have separated them.

It soared to new heights when Tarrant proposed. It grew through a year-long engagement. It grew through years of marriage. It grew through the birth of their one and only child. It grew even as Alice was gone in another world, it exploded to life when she returned. 

It grew as Tarrant kept watch over her still, dying body. It blossomed when she returned to him. It grew as they nursed each other back to health. It grew with each step their daughter took toward womanhood. It grew with each grandchild.

It grew with each kiss, each time they made love. It grew with each year, each week, each day, each hour.

Their love had no bounds, it grew like an infinitely expanding universe, beyond what mere words can convey.

And it all started, as many great things do, with loonies and revolution.

**Author's Note:**

> Song lyrics contained are from "Lullaby" by Lamb.


End file.
